


Dead-Eyed Tsuna

by wyrvel



Series: The Abalone Funeral Dirge [1]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Abuse, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Disciplinary Committee Tsuna, Dramedy, Emotionally Constipated Tsuna, Ensemble Cast, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, Major Original Character(s), Other, Past Sexual Abuse, Sawada Tsunayoshi Protection Squad: The Origins, Slow Build, Triggers Labeled, Tsuna's raging fearboner, Unconventional Uses for Dying Will Flames, Whump, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2018-05-10 00:41:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 34
Words: 244,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5562169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrvel/pseuds/wyrvel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abalone Funeral Dirge Act I.</p><p>Sawada Tsunayoshi is cold, aloof, constantly exhausted, perpetually doubtful, and has the resting face of an axe murderer. He's resigned to being a complete failure for the rest of his life, and is pretty satisfied with himself, as long as he has people like his best friend Sasagawa Kyouko to help him along the way.</p><p>But his dull, "emotionless" status quo is shattered when Kyouko decides he should join the Disciplinary Committee and do something with himself. The Disciplinary Committee, as in the thinly veiled school gang run by the Scariest Teenage Boy Alive.</p><p>And yet, against all odds, it's not the Committee itself that led him into mass international criminal politics, magic powers, and casual murder.</p><p>(Tsuna is in the Disciplinary Committee, and somewhere else, Timoteo's son is the heir to the seat of Vongola Decimo. Featuring: Ensemble Cast, many OCs, and fully original story arcs. Humour/Action/Drama, contains dark themes. Heavy AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Introduction Of Sasagawa Kyouko

**Author's Note:**

> **Notes (8/10/2017):**  
>  Went through the entire fic and gave it a solid editing! Removed a lot of flab, weasel words, and flowery language, rewrote some scenes (most notably chapter 17), and added new scenes in chapters 7, 23, 26, and 27. I've also added a new chapter to the end of the fic, chapter 33. I'm tired and my wrist hurts
> 
>  **Notes (28/12/2015):**  
>  And we're back!
> 
> For new readers, this is a tidied-up version of a fic I first posted on May 1st, 2015, which I decided to temporarily take down because the plot came out very clunky and hard-to-parse. It was reasonably popular. I hope you like this fic too.
> 
> For old readers, there shouldn't be any huge divergences in content until Chapter 7, but there's still a lot of foreshadowing, and a full-out completely different story for the second arc.

Sawada Tsunayoshi learned about the mafia when he was six, and he didn't think much of it.

It was one overheard conversation, in which his father clearly stated he was involved in the mafia, a flashbulb memory caused by the uncharacteristic strain in his voice that had frightened Tsuna at the time. He hadn't really known what the mafia was when he heard it, and when he figured out, he just assumed that his father was doing good by his family by not getting them involved. 

In fact, Tsuna was more concerned about his awkward, ham-fisted attempts at being a Normal Father during his visits. And the long, endlessly stretching absences. Tsuna could really do without those.

To be perfectly honest, there was never anything particularly interesting about his life, beyond his father's illicit criminal activities. He lives in a nice, lavish house, with a mother who loves him, and attends a nice, well-rounded school, with teachers that hate him. And students that hate him. And some spare animals that hate him. In fact, it may be entirely possible that every single living creature besides his own parents are in despair of Tsuna's very existence.

When he thinks about it, Tsuna is sure he probably earned it. He's incompetent to superhuman levels. His (currently) brown locks looks more like something crawled onto his head and died there than actual hair. He sucks at socializing, he has the hand-eye coordination of a stumbling baby giraffe, and his test scores are abysmal. It feels terrible, he can feel the holes in himself widening, and he's helpless to stop his ability to retain information from slowly dwindling into nothing.

He can't even learn simple things, like how to dance. Or cook. Or clean. Or anything, really.

People caught onto his uselessness quickly, and with fervour, and his nickname — 'Dame-Tsuna', _no-good Tsuna_ — was so widespread that even his mother uses it. Affectionately, like it's just a cute joke. Tsuna wanted to be okay with this, but he didn't _always_ want to be dame-Tsuna. He wants it to be a phase like his mother seems to think it is, but...but...

Tsuna thinks that thought was when his spirit _really_ started falling apart.

He used to have terrible anxiety, but somehow his responses became dull and uninspired. He didn't have the _energy_ to be terrified. Even as the anxiety shook his bones, he could barely muster up the twitches and jumps that had once came naturally to him.

The calmness of his body made him less clumsy, but the nickname never went way.

Dame-Tsuna.

Dame-Tsuna.

Dame-Tsuna.

Dame-Tsuna gets bad grades. Dame-Tsuna forgets where he's going half the time. Dame-Tsuna forgot to do his homework. Dame-Tsuna got all the answers wrong on the test. Dame-Tsuna's failing PE. Dame-Tsuna makes every team he's on lose.

Dame-Tsuna is worthless.

His will leaked out of him until there was barely a drop of it left, until he couldn't even be upset any more, until he didn't even have the energy to start hating himself. Failure stopped looking like failure. It was just _him_. It was just the way he was.

Everyone seemed to expect that, so he did too.

 

* * *

 

"Seriously, again!?"

Tsuna stares blankly at the ceiling of the gymnasium, holding a hand to his throbbing cheek. He doesn't even bother trying to go after the basketball gently rolling away. It's their fault for throwing it at him. Were they just looking for an excuse to call him useless again?

_Annoying._

At the jeers of his classmates to get off the court, Tsuna drags himself over to the benches and slumps against them. The cheek isn't stinging any more, but it still aches a little. He's always recovered quickly, not that anyone ever notices. It's useful for all the times he screws up, which is a lot of times. All the time. His fast recovery time might be the only reason he isn't dead, or permanently bedridden, with how many scrapes he ends up in. Maybe he should see his doctor about that. He only just had a checkup earlier that spring, but—

"Tsuna!"

Oh boy, they're done.

"What's with you, Dame-Tsuna? Because of you, we lost the game!"

Tsuna gives them all an empty look and outstretches his open hands, resigned to his fate. They shove a broom at him and storm away. It's a common routine between them.

"Seriously...Even though he takes the punishment, he still doesn't try to do any better!"

"That guy really is useless."

_Annoying._

Tsuna gets to sweeping the area. Thankfully, he doesn't have to mop, and they don't track in much more than dust, so it's not like it's an outrageously challenging task. If anything, it's relaxing. A repetitive, simple task he never screws up. Maybe he should become a janitor when he graduates?

And of course, he has to graduate, regardless of how much of a mess his school career has been so far. If not university, at least up to high school. First of all, it's important to his mother, who can't support him through life. He's got his hands full ruining his own life as it is, he doesn't need to ruin hers too. Getting a stable job is the least he can do. It's important to take responsibility for your actions.

Second of all, it's the easiest way to spend time with his only friend.

"Tsuna, again?" A voice calls from the window. Tsuna glances over to see Kyouko peeking into the gymnasium, frowning. Tsuna is absolutely certain that Kyouko only frowns when she's around him. It's like he's an off switch for her face.

"Ah, yeah," Tsuna mumbles with a half-hearted stroke through his hair. "I don't know any techniques for improving hand-eye coordination, so..."

"You're always thinking so negatively! I'm sure you can do it eventually!" She gives him a big, winning grin that instantly lightens the edges of Tsuna's black vacuum of a mood. Kyouko's endless optimism is his only light in day-to-day school life. It is very likely the only light for a lot of the Namimori Middle School student body.

Sasagawa Kyouko is, of course, the most popular girl in school for that reason. Her innocent smile bolsters the hearts of everyone around her, and her forgiving and upbeat attitude has made a friend out of nearly everyone she's ever met. At first, Tsuna had a crush on her, but that eroded into dust with along with his will to be a sustainable human being. He _might_ have thought he would never be good enough for her, in the dying gasps of his ability to feel self-pity, but it's kind of bleary.

Either way, his sudden plummet in anxiety led him to decide to just talk to her normally, and it turns out that not only is it incredibly easy to talk to Sasagawa Kyouko, she is probably his sole reason for existing at this point. If he did not have that slightest glimpse of warmth each day, he would just vanish. Poof. So meaningless Tsuna's existence would be, the universe would go 'good gracious, that thing's still here?' and erase him from reality.

Instead, Tsuna is sweeping floors and socializing through a window. See? _Meaning_.

"You're always hanging around that loner," her friend drawls from behind her. Kurokawa Hana, Kyouko's close friend, has always been as apathetic to Tsuna as Tsuna is to life. Sometimes she throws half-hearted insults at him, as if hoping he might spontaneously grow a personality in response. She has yet to succeed.

"Tsuna isn't a loner, Hana! People just don't see his good points!"

"Good points."

Kyouko blinks at her. "Yes?"

Hana raises an eyebrow at Tsuna, who is staring impassively back at her through the window, and then looks at Kyouko again. " _Good points_."

"Tsuna has lots of good points!" Kyouko pouts. "Let's see...he's calm in a crisis, he doesn't get in fights, he's never mean to anyone, he's always doing favours for people, and he never holds grudges!"

"Sounds more like a spineless gopher than anything," Hana drawls. Tsuna doesn't miss how she narrows her eyes at him, _daring_ him to feel emotions. But it is a failure, just like every other attempt she's ever made. He is unflappable above all. Also, yeah, that does sort of sound like a gopher.

Kyouko's pout intensifies for a moment, but before she can complain about Hana's unending march against the black hole where Tsuna's soul should be, a voice calls from beyond the view of the window.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Kyouko!"

"Mochida-senpai!" Kyouko greets happily. Ah yes, the captain of the kendou club, Mochida Kensuke. Hates Tsuna. Likes Kyouko. Kind of a huge dick. Tsuna generally ignores him unless it seems like he's going to be rude to Kyouko, but mostly Mochida passive-aggressively insults Tsuna. Unlike Hana, he seems to be operating under the assumption that Tsuna actually has feelings to hurt.

Well, that's not quite true, Tsuna has feelings. Like...boredom? Dissatisfaction? Warm contentment? Sasagawa Kyouko?

(Tsuna has forgotten what true happiness is like, but he's holding out for a glimpse of it at some point in his future, so Kyouko is currently a placeholder until then.)

"Sorry, I have to go," Kyouko sighs, and then instantly perks up. "But listen, meet me at the front gate after school. I have a _great_ idea for you!"

"Sure. See you, Kyouko, Hana."

"Use an honorific. I don't _know_ you," Hana snorts.

"Hana-chan, then."

Hana looks violently constipated, and Kyouko giggles and drags her away.

Tsuna watches them disappear past the view of the window, stares off into space for a moment, and then just goes back to sweeping. It's not an awful way to spend a lunch break, really. He'll have plenty of time to eat, and since Kyouko's busy, he has literally nothing else to do anyway.

Yeah, he should probably look into a career in maintenance.

 

* * *

 

After classes end, Tsuna waits patiently at the front gate, staring blankly at the stone pillars and making everyone who has to pass by him extremely uncomfortable. Now that he's restricted to waiting on Kyouko, he actually has a chance to wonder what on earth her 'great idea' was. Obviously not walking home — they only really do that if their paths cross on the way out of school, naturally as two streams merging. Maybe she wanted to take him somewhere to eat? Or play? She had once gotten so excited about the new arcade that she begged Hana and Tsuna to come along with her, and they ended up spending four hours learning that Kyouko is actually a part-time DDR Master, Destroyer Of Worlds. Tsuna has never seen a pair of legs move that fast, and he doubts he ever will again.

But Kyouko had just told them she wanted to go to the arcade, back then. It's uncharacteristic of her to withhold information. Making this Weird.

Even weirder is how Hana is absent when Kyouko jogs up to him, grinning cheerfully. Tsuna is starting to have a Feeling again. that Feeling is _intense foreboding_.

"Tsuna!" She calls.

"Afternoon, Kyouko. What did you want to show me?"

"It's the _best_ idea. Okay, so I was thinking, maybe Hana was right! You are negative! You need, uhm..." She pauses to think. "Focus! You need more _meat_ to your life! More, uh... _extremeness_!"

Tsuna's face pulls a little at the unintentional tic. Her older brother favours the word 'extreme', and Kyouko ends up falling back on it almost unconsciously whenever she wants to describe the concept of energy. Like the first thing she thinks of when someone says 'pure motivation' is her brother.

Well, it _is_ accurate. But it tends to grate. Sasagawa Ryouhei _really_ likes that word.

"Where am I getting this life-meat then?"

"It's a secret," she teases, and then giggles to herself, like keeping secrets that will be revealed within the next five minutes is somehow naughty. Tsuna is unintentionally charmed. Kyouko is charming. She is a brilliant and magical human being.

"Lead the way," Tsuna says.

Kyouko takes him back into the school, and after a moment of consideration, tells him to close his eyes. He frowns, but obediently squeezes his eyes shut. She takes him by the hand and leads him carefully down halls and up stairs. He usually navigates the school through little more than muscle memory, so he has absolutely no clue where she's taking him.

They finally stop in a very empty-sounding hallway, and she pats him gently. "Okay, now stay here, and _don't you dare_ open your eyes!"

Tsuna nods. "Got it."

Kyouko vanishes from his awareness for a few moments, but he can hear her voice carry through the halls. He can't tell what she's saying, but she sounds very excited and pleased. Tsuna isn't sure he likes standing out in the hallway like this, all exposed, with no way of knowing who — or what — is around him. His sensation of intense foreboding is traded out for a distinct, wailing note of unease, like his brain just saw a person filing their nails while smirking at a nearby chalkboard.

He relaxes a bit when he hears Kyouko's footsteps running back to him. To his surprise, she swoops in behind him and covers his face.

"You don't trust me?"

"It's not that! I just want to make _extra_ sure," she insists. "Okay, so this _was_ Hana's suggestion, but I'm sure you'll like it, it's perfect for you. Are you ready?"

"Not really ready for anything Hana suggested."

"She doesn't _really_ dislike you, Tsuna, she's just teasing."

"Yeah, but I'm still not ready."

Kyouko giggles again and just pushes him forward. It's not Hana that's bothering him about this situation, though. He just feels so _tense_ , like something terrible is about to happen. He's not sure he has ever been as queasy about an event as he is about Kyouko urging him into this room.

He hears the steady incline of quiet voices, and the pressure against his nerves builds. There's an aborted shout, almost meaningless, but he feels a soft breeze as he stands in the doorway of the room, the breeze being disrupted, and a horrible, _horrible_ discordant feeling rising to a crescendo of _**'SAWADA TSUNAYOSHI YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE'.**_

Almost - no, precisely - on instinct, Tsuna uses his shoulder-blades to nudge Kyouko back, so he can pull his leg behind him as support. It's only then that he hears it, a soft ruffling of fabric and the wicked strike of an object through air, and by then he's already yanking up his bag to block his face - _torso_ \- torso, and then-

Something knocks into him, _hard_ , shaking his limbs with the force of the unstoppable impact, and he lets out a little _'HIIII'_ at the suddenness of it. His centre of balance holds strong, for once, and he's sent skidding back until he hits the wall. Kyouko lets out a little shriek of surprise.

Tsuna's eyes are still closed.

He _can't feel his arms._

Tsuna opens his eyes.

Hibari Kyouya stands in the doorway, ringed in a halo of light from the open window behind him, like a great and terrible god. He still has his arm outstretched from the tonfa strike. Interestingly, he only has one tonfa in his hands. This is interesting because he is Hibari Kyouya, and Hibari Kyouya never resists the opportunity to beat a person within half an inch of their life, and that task is best done with two tonfas.

The Great And Terrible God (Of The Namimori Disciplinary Committee) narrows his already slash-thin eyes at Tsuna, who's brain has just experienced a fatal error. He just can't parse it. The Namimori Disciplinary Committee is comprised of nothing but delinquents, and it's led by the isolated and unreasonably violent Hibari Kyouya, who runs the middle school like a police state. No yelling, no spitting, no smoking, no uniform violations, no _crowding_. Hibari Kyouya is so violent that he assaults people - with _weapons_ \- because they're _grouping together_.

And he's standing in the doorway. With his single tonfa outstretched. Because he just hit Tsuna with it.

Oh, his other hand is holding a glass of water. So he was enjoying a nice refreshment before he quickly grabbed a weapon to hit Tsuna with. That sure does make no more sense than anything else about this situation.

Tsuna's numb arms can no longer be bothered to have basic muscle control, and the bag in his hands flops uselessly down to the floor.

"Secretary," says Hibari Kyouya.

"What," says Tsuna.

But Hibari has already turned back into the room, presumably to finish his cool and refreshing glass of H2O. Neat.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know that would happen," Kyouko says in a high-pitched whisper.

"What, what just happened, exactly," Tsuna says, just as high-pitched.

"I thought that you might need to join a club, but you don't have any hobbies. But then I remembered you like to help people!" She explains sheepishly. "So I thought you might like it at the Disciplinary Committee...You know, helping them out, keeping watch over the student body..."

"Making sure Hibari-san doesn't kill anyone?"

"I don't think he's _that_ violent. But you know, yeah! Just...making Namimori Middle a more peaceful and happy place! I wanted to surprise you, since you don't seem to get a lot surprises..."

She smiles expectantly at him.

Tsuna's face pulls a little.

Well, Hibari _did_ already...test him? Is that what that was? Testing him to see if he could take a hit, or something? What would he have done if Tsuna got a white line of sweet singing metal in the solar plexus? Would Hibari just go 'no' and walk away? He would, wouldn't he. He would totally do that.

Oh boy, what if Hibari _continues_ hurting him? Well, that _is_ a guaranteed certainty if you so much as stand next to the guy, but for... _secretarial_ reasons? Seeing as a secretary would be near him All The Time. This is such a bad idea.

"...Thanks, Kyouko. This was a great idea."

She claps her hands. "Thank goodness! I was so worried! Anyway, there's nothing too complicated about secretary work, so I don't think you have anything to be worried about, right?"

"I don't worry about anything."

"Haha! That's Tsuna for you!"

Tsuna tries his damnedest to look into the darkest recesses of his absent heart for the memory of a full-faced smile. He manages to roughly replicate a grin. Kyouko doesn't seem to notice anything wrong with it, which makes Tsuna feel a lot better, for some reason.

"Okay, so you get yourself situated, and tell me all about it tomorrow! I'm so glad you like this! I always feel guilty about having to leave you for my own club meetings..."

"It's...fine. I'm fine. I mean, I like...the Disciplinary Committee." No he doesn't. "A lot."

She gives him a big hug, and his will to be negative collapses under the weight of all the pleasant feelings it gives him. He pats her arm in appreciation, and waves her off with a small smile that feels cozy on his face.

Boredom. Irritation. Dissatisfaction. Contentment. Unease. Confusion. _Sasagawa Kyouko._

"Alright, new boy, here's your uniform. Let's get you started."

Oh yeah. Fear too. There's always that one.


	2. The Introduction Of A School Gang

The first thing Tsuna learns about the Disciplinary Committee is that Hibari Kyouya rarely interacts with the Disciplinary Committee. This revelation is nothing short of miraculous. Heavensent. He has never been more grateful for a professional relationship in his life.

In fact, the committee is far more friendly than he would have thought, for a poorly disguised street gang. For one, they're actually interested in Disciplinary Duties, and keep track of complaints about reoccurring offenders. Tsuna wonders if that system is how Hibari manages to trace his targets.

The second-in-command, Kusakabe Tetsuya, gives him a gakuran and a small device Tsuna assumes to be a pager, claiming that they would give him a cell phone, but knowing Tsuna, he'd probably mess up and text all their enemies by accident. Tsuna, knowing himself, readily agrees. He does not question who the Committee's 'enemies' are.

Unlike a cell phone or the old pagers he's seen before, the device he's given has a keyboard and clear functions, so Tsuna spent most of his first afternoon getting used to the device. It seems closer to a PDA in usage, honestly. There's no information on it, so Tsuna practices by setting up a schedule for his days, allocating an extra hour before school for the Disciplinary Committee - as Kusakabe had suggested - as well as the breaks and after-school. Lunch period is free for everyone, especially Hibari, who uses it to take naps. It's pretty simple to remember, even for someone like Tsuna.

Everyone in the Disciplinary Committee wears their hair in a regent pompadour, but Tsuna doubts he'll be able to tame his hair into such a shape, and he's only the secretary anyway, so he just leaves it be. He just pulls his uniform over his jacket, fully embracing his casual attachment to this group, but then immediately takes it off and just switches the uniform jacket out for the gakuran because that is _way_ too many layers for summer.

Over the next five days, nothing scary or terrible happens, beyond Hibari generally existing. He gets a few contact numbers, goes on errand runs for the group, and gets into the habit of snapping photos of students breaking the rules and creating a folder for each offender, sending any file that has more than ten infractions to the complaint box.

They put him in a little desk by the door, and he usually just sits there and texts Kyouko or struggles through his homework until it's time for class. Kyouko is enthralled in his successful entry into the Disciplinary Committee, and his mom baked him a cake when Kyouko told her about it. A whole cake.

Of course, while the Disciplinary Commitee  _does_  take school matters very seriously...they're still basically, for all intents and purposes, a street gang.

It's the weekend, and Tsuna hovers uncertainly by the convenience store, where a few gakuran-sporting teens are loitering by the entrance. Before, he always passed them without much trouble, since they don't tend to hassle citizens, but does he have to acknowledge them now...? Maybe there's a system of mutual respect between them. They can just nod at each other and be on their way!

"Hey, shrimp!"

Or not.

"...Hi," Tsuna says after a moment. The Committee member leaps to his feet with a grin, and his pompadour bobs up and down as a result. Tsuna stares at it, mesmerized by the motion.

"Listen, the boys are halfway through their routes, everybody could do with a snack. Why don't you help 'em all out?"

"Uh...going to the cafeteria and back to the Committee room is one thing, but..." Tsuna starts to argue, but he snaps his jaw shut when he sees the steadily darkening expression on the Committee member's face. "...I guess I could use the practice. I haven't really figured out how this thing's map works yet..."

"Great!" The boy slings an arm around Tsuna and urges him into the store. He's helpless to refuse, and ends up being dragged down the isles, picking up all manner of snacks and drinks, enough to make his arms weak trying to hold the weight up. Just how many of Hibari's Committee are out on patrol right now? His hands are full, so he can't even check the device to find out. Maybe they're moving in groups?

"What the hell are you doing?"

Tsuna and the Committee member turn to see an exasperated Kurokawa Hana, holding a bottle of Pocari Sweat in one hand, and a water gun in the other. Tsuna idly wonders if Hana is copying Hibari’s aesthetic.

"Weren't you the one who was calling me 'gopher' to begin with?" Tsuna brushes off.

"Who are you gophering for, an _army_?"

"An army couldn't hope to match the Disciplinary Committee!" The Committee member roars at Hana, puffing up his chest and smirking proudly.

Hana stares at him.

Then she turns to Tsuna.

"You're not going to seriously run across town all by yourself, are you?"

"I have no idea. Probably."

_"Don't ignore me, you ugly witch!"_

"Just because you're a sloth doesn't mean you have to get pushed around by a bunch of monkeys. Animals don't always need to stick together."

"You're very on point with your metaphors today, Hana-chan."

She twitches at the sarcastic honorific. He doesn't even have to change his tone. He knows that it bugs her even if he drones it out with all the life of a dusty, centuries-old mummy. "I don't know how to feel about you bending over backwards for these punks."

_"Hey, are you listenin' to me?"_

"Wow. Me, doing what others tell me to. Unprecedented."

"Self-loathing isn't a good look for you."

"I'm pretty okay with myself, actually. Maybe you should work on your perception skill-"

" _DON'T IGNORE ME!_ "

The pair turn to look at the seething Committee member. His pompadour has begun to fray in the effort of trying to gain Hana's attention, and his face has gone a furious tomato red. Hana rolls her eyes, but Tsuna at least has the decency to give his frustrated companion his undivided attention.

"I don't want to be ignored by some two-bit grass-eater like you," the poor delinquent continues.

"Well, I don't want to talk to some stupid monkey, so it looks like no one's getting anything out of this conversation! Byyye." Hana waves and passes them with confident strides. Tsuna honestly wonders how someone with such a negative disposition gets along with a person like Kyouko. Special treatment? Girl power?

"Don't worry!" Tsuna lets out a yelp as he gets a violent slap to the back that knocks him into the magazine rack. He turns, frustrated, to the delinquent, who is now looking a little twitchy, but is at least trying to smile at him. "I'll pay for all of it, obviously. But I gotta stick to my route, y'know?"

"...Yeah. I get it," Tsuna sighs.

After taking a minute to tidy up all the magazines he fell on, the delinquent pays for the snacks and sends Tsuna on his way with another slap to the back that sends him teetering dangerously close to the asphalt. Kusakabe and Hibari's approval goes a long way with Committee friendliness, apparently. They've never treated him with anything other than disdain before he got the secretary job.

Tsuna takes out his device and accesses the map. The map is one of the things that makes him a little curious about what the device is, because it's a perfect pixellated map of Namimori, with neon lines coursing through the streets in a rainbow, and markers identifying both himself and all the Committee members in town. Kusakabe had explained that the gakuran have tracers on them, but it's still not something he expected out of what he initially thought was a pager.

He pulls out the checklist function, and sets it to 'all contacts'. A line of names scrolls down, and when he uses the splitscreen button (again, not a function he has seen on any device), the checklist highlights the name based on the marker he has selected. Tsuna's lips twitch, feeling a little pleased at his new proficiency. He sucks at athleticism, but at least he can operate what he is starting to suspect is alien technology.

The map is so simple an infant can navigate it. He manages to knock down six names in under ten minutes. Actually interacting with the Committee members is awkward, since they really tear into their bags looking for their usual snack and only pay him attention long enough to give him a friendly punch to the arm or slap to the back (thus guaranteeing he's going to come home black and blue), but it is still probably easier than suffering through a game of softball.

As Tsuna goes onto his next row of roads, he starts noticing something...weird. The markers are breaking off their routes. At first he thinks it's just a group going after someone 'disturbing the peace', but then he sees _all_  the markers are swarming. Tsuna taps the arrow key a few times, trying to get to the marker they all seem to be moving towards.

***** _Kusakabe Tetsuya (General)_

And then, a marker running at breakneck speeds, over buildings and places a vehicle definitely couldn't traverse. Tsuna doesn't even need to move through the markers to know who that is.

***** _Hibari Kyouya (Boss)_

Tsuna pauses by a lamppost and quickly switches back to the main menu, then the inbox. Three messages. Two of them are suggestions on what Tsuna should buy for the Committee members on the next run. The third and most recent makes Tsuna's gut twist.

_|war with bike north namimori contain fight_

Okay, looks like they're going to war. Neat. That's something Tsuna definitely did not in any way sign up for.

Well, he  _did_  sign up for food. He should probably drop the bags at the battlefield for them to dig into after they're finished destroying the enemy. He's nothing if not totally loyal, after all.

Tsuna takes a few shortcuts he learned when he was younger and plagued with bullies to get to the northern edge of Namimori, staring at the map all the while. Oh, looks like he's about to cross paths with...

"Hibari-san," Tsuna greets the leader of the Disciplinary Committee, who is perched on the roof of the house that Tsuna is trying to sneak through the backyard of.

Hibari looks down at him. Tsuna gives him a flaccid wave. Hibari returns to looking out on the horizon. "The Namimori West High students are disrupting the peace of Namimori. If anyone interrupts, I'll bite them to death."

"High-schoolers?" Tsuna says in what might be a whine if he actually put in the effort to change his tone at all. Instead, it probably came out very cool and composed, which defeats the point of whining to begin with. He should really work on that.

Instead of answering him, Hibari just climbs to the spine of the roof to get a new angle. He apparently catches sight of some stragglers, because he's barely up there for five seconds before he's taking off again, tonfas at the ready. Tsuna sighs and looks back at the device. Apparently, 'if anyone interrupts' was said literally. The Committee aren't clashing with the enemy, they're creating a ring around the apparent battlefield. Tsuna doesn't doubt that this is going to end in Hibari and Kusakabe defeating all of them themselves.

Since he trusts his boss, Tsuna approaches the convergence point at a more sedate pace. His arms are seriously aching, and he just wants to be done with this pain in the ass 'mission'. He'd assert himself, but...well, it's not like he had anything planned, right? He wasn't going to see Kyouko until this afternoon, so his morning and lunch periods technically  _were_  free. Still. Tsuna is  _so tired_.

Something on the device catches his eye. Hibari's marker is dancing across the battlefield as expected, but the ring of Committee members has destabilized. Some members are as far as four streets away. What the hell is going on up there? Surely they can be tidier than this. The entire reason they contained the brawl was to keep from 'disturbing the peace'. What could scatter them like this?

An older teen in a white coat goes speeding by on a roaring motorbike, shooting by so fast the resulting wind nearly knocks Tsuna right off his feet.

Ah, yeah, there we go. Bikes.  _War with bike_. It's a Bousouzoku gang. They're trying to contain a gang riding motorbikes. Good to know.

Tsuna races the rest of the way up, and sure enough, at the edge of town, in the lot next to an abandoned factory, there’s a smattering of middle-school students in black gakuran uniforms circling the white-clad teens circling on motorbikes, laughing and waving their weapons at them. Tsuna notes that most of them are giving Hibari and Kusakabe a wide berth, relying more on their ability to evade the two rather than their ability to actually hit them. The noise is deafening, both with motorbikes and war screams.

"Shouwa era..." Tsuna mutters to himself in awe.

A grinning biker comes roaring at him on his bike with a steel pipe, and Tsuna quickly darts off behind a short wall. The bike veers off to go terrorize someone else. Breathing heavily, Tsuna looks for someone to take his convenience store bags, but he's at a loss. Everyone is either busy or likely to smash them. Thinking on his feet, Tsuna quickly crawls along the wall until he gets to the road between it and the chainlink fence around the factory. He takes a deep breath, checks his device for a reason to not do something this stupid, and lacking one, takes off into a run.

Miraculously, he doesn't fall flat on his face, and when he tosses the bags over the fence, they don't catch on the jutting edges on top. Satisfied, he almost turns and leaves, but then the tell-tale roar of a bike with its muffler removed strikes through his ears. He jerks to look to his right, where yet another member of Namimori West is revving his engine.

They make eye contact.

" _HIIIIIII_!" Tsuna shrieks. He can barely hear himself over the roar of the engine, and pure panic decimates years of self-calming mechanisms. He's up the fence in seconds, and would be over it too, if his pant leg didn't get snagged on the wire edges. He jerks forward and swings right into the fence, giving him a faceful of meshed metal. His gakuran flutters delicately around his head, seemingly unperturbed by his struggles to hold his sore face and to escape his upside-down prison. Why do these things always happen to  _him_?

"Don't worry, shrimp!" A voice calls. He's gripped by the waist and pushed upwards, then gently flipped right-side up. Tsuna carefully lifts the hem of his gakuran to peek up at his saviour. A member of the Committee grins down him, like an angel.

"Thank you, senpai," Tsuna says softly.

"No problem, shrimp! But you shouldn't be here. Secretaries have no place in a war."

"Uh...yeah, probably. But I haven't finished the snack run, so..." Tsuna gestures to the bags strewn about the ground.

"Going above and beyond for your gang, eh shrimp? Great work!" Tsuna receives a now-familiar slap against his back that knocks him right into the fence again. He grunts and tries not to blame the Committee for being so exuberant. They're delinquents. What's to be done about that?

"So what's the deal? People are really stupid enough to raise hell in Hibari-san's city?" Tsuna prompts as he dusts himself off.

"Oh, man, they're not usually so bad," says the Committee member, "But they got this new boss, and this boss thinks he can start somethin' with the Chairman and get away with it. 'Course, the Chairman and Kusakabe-senpai are taking care of it just fine. We're just trying to keep them from wrecking the place while they clean up, y'know?"

"A valiant effort," Tsuna mumbles to himself. To the Committee member, "Is there anywhere I can stash this stuff for you guys?"

"Just put it inside the factory. I'll tell the boys you were in," the Committee member grins.

"Thanks, senpai. Have fun." Tsuna avoids the back lot and the carpark, instead opting to circle around to the back of the building. No way he's dealing with  _that_  hot mess. He's not even sure he remembers why he came. Convenience? Trusting Hibari's bloodlust? Something like that.

With a grunt, Tsuna hoists himself and his bags through a broken window. The bottom is all clear, but the top is jagged, and he has to crawl low to avoid getting a hole in his brand new gakuran. He actually kinda likes this thing, and the Disciplinary Committee might be pissed if he wrecked it for such a ridiculous reason.

The inside of the factory is dusty, and, of course, abandoned. Most of the equipment is gone, moved to their new location, so its also pretty barren. Not a lot of stuff to look at, here. The ground floor is just one dusty expanse, with the huge double-doors leading out into the lot wide open. Since that's where the bikers are, Tsuna instead runs up the metal staircase lining the walls of the building, up to a small, busted door between the industrial part of the building and a small strip of pleasant-looking thin-carpeted offices. Again, totally empty, but also totally safe, and overlooking the lot, so he knows when it's time to go down and finish his delivery. He could burn up another three hours before he has to go see Kyouko, and there's no way Hibari would take three hours to finish a job, so he's okay with this setup.

Tsuna throws the bags into a corner and leans against the dusty, stained window. There's a hairline crack along the length of it, warped at the impact site of what must have been some sort of projectile. This place is in a terrible state. It kinda smells like cigarettes, too, but Tsuna hasn't seen any sign of squatting — the Committee probably takes care of this building themselves.

Outside, Hibari is whittling down what little remains of the highschoolers, and Kusakabe is corralling the defeated members off to the side. Several enraged bikers are flying in to avenge their fallen brothers, and Hibari is quickly disposing of them. Or rather, their bikes. Hibari seems to hold a frankly terrifying loathing of them, and is more quick to silence them than to actually strike their riders. His noise tolerance really is low.

Tsuna searches through his bags for his own snacks — coffee milk and rice crackers. He pops the tab and takes a long swig. It’s been surprisingly easy to kick back and take it easy despite being roped in with this group. Part of it is definitely the fact his soul has long since rotted away at this point, leaving only mild interest and a willingness to obey, but Tsuna wonders if the other part might be that he actually gets along with everyone. They never argue, they're always quick to praise him, and Tsuna had even gotten out of a verbal lashing for calling Hibari 'Hibari-san' when Tsuna pointed out that Hibari doesn't actually seem to care if Tsuna calls him 'chairman' or not.

Also, he hasn't messed up yet. That's terrifying. He usually bungles everything he's given. This is an unprecedented scenario.

 _ **"KORRRAAAAAAAA!"**_ Comes from outside, loud and clear thanks to Hibari destroying all the motorbikes. Tsuna props himself on his knees and peeks out the window. Through the dirty glass, he can see that the Committee has nearly finished, but there's a large group on foot trying to break the ring of Committee members. Hibari is trying to clear them all out, but they're good at scattering. Tsuna takes a sip of coffee milk. The Committee should probably change the circle to ring around the group, now that they aren't containing motorcycles, so Hibari can just plow right into them. Instead, they keep shifting, and by the erratic strikes, Hibari is starting to get pissed off.

Tsuna narrows his eyes. Hibari is a loner, and the Committee is full of followers, but Kusakabe should be able to direct them all just fine. He flips through his device and tries to find Kusakabe's marker on the map.

Oh. So he's headed for the high school. Okay.

Well, crowd mentality isn't working for the Committee right now, and if he doesn't resolve this situation, Hibari is going to be in one hell of a bad mood that no one, not even Kusakabe, could diffuse. He's got a plan and the resources to execute it without sticking his neck out, so...

Tsuna sends out a group call signal. After a few seconds, most of the Committee picks up.

"Close the circle around the group so Hibari-san can hit them properly," Tsuna says flatly. "They're not on bikes anymore. You don't need a circle that big."

He hangs up and peeks out the window again. Sure enough, they start closing in, and in the new shape, Hibari can shear them like a landmower through grass. Thank god. Herd mentality is such a pain. No one does anything when there's a bunch of people around you not doing anything either.

Satisfied, Tsuna opens his rice crackers and enjoys a pleasant snack, occasionally checking his inbox for updates. Kusakabe is going to go talk with this Bousouzoku gang's boss, Hibari has gone back into town to hunt down the rest of the miscreants, and the Committee members are laying out all the punks they captured and returning to their routes. Most of them make a loop into the factory so Tsuna can throw them their snacks.

By the time Tsuna finishes his coffee milk and decides leaving the building probably won't lead to his imminent death, Kusakabe has sent a message to Tsuna directly. The message says that the leader of the gang is actually a middle-schooler himself, a third-year in Koyama Middle. Along with a request to gather information.

_Personally._

Tsuna chokes on his crackers.

  
  


* * *

 

 

"Do I want to know?"

Tsuna doesn't bother to look up from his position crouched behind a lamppost to see who's talking to him. He knows Hana's exact flavour of distasteful sneer by now.

"Probably not."

"I always told Kyouko you were a super creep, but this is a new low."

"I'm on a job for the Committee, actually, so maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge."

"They asked you to stalk a middle school like a stalker freak?"

Tsuna finally looks up at Hana. She's still holding the watergun, but she has a bag with her now. "Weren't you headed in the opposite direction an hour ago?"

"I wanted to use the gun to shoot something down. I shot it down. Now I'm giving the gun back," she explains carefully.

"Was shooting an item down with a watergun that you needed to get from someone else’s place your first plan?"

"Duh. I mean, have you _seen_  me during the summer festivals? They have to chase me away from the booths with a broom. Half of Kyouko's stuffed animals?  _Me_ ," she says with a tinge of child-like pride unbecoming of a girl who considers every boy in her school to be either a 'gross immature monkey' or a 'total creep'.

"Huh. That's nice. Excuse me." Tsuna goes back to his position staring at Koyama Middle School's gate and trying to will this mysterious biker boss character out with the power of his mind. Hana grunts at being ignored. Tsuna ignores that too, hoping she'll take the hint and leave.

"You're not gonna do something dangerous, are you?"

Damn. "Oh, yeah, definitely. It's okay, I heal fast."

"Wha- you  _dumbass sloth creep_! This is like, the exact opposite of what Kyouko put you in the Committee for!" Hana barks.

"The Disciplinary Committee is a school gang. I'm not sure what you were expecting."

"Productive action? Constructive reasoning? A training montage?"

"I helped a bunch of the Committee members beat up a rival gang properly, if it counts."

" _NO IT DOESN'T_!"

Before Tsuna can brush her off again, a group of bloody and bruised gang members start running in the school gates. Well, that's his cue, he supposes, not like sitting around behind a lamppost is going to do him any favours. Not while Hana is berating him for his life choices, anyway. He removes his gakuran.

"Hold this," he says.

"Wha-  _Tsuna_!" Hana yells after him, but he's already running into the school. He ducks behind a broken, graffiti-covered wall to avoid being seen by the baseball team practicing in the field nearby. This place is a delinquent hellhole, but damn if it isn't loyal to its sports ventures.

He fumbles through a quick text to Kusakabe telling him he's successfully entered the lion's den and presses on to the main entrance. A few punks look at him suspiciously, but make no move to apprehend him. He gives him his best 'I belong here and am also a badass' look, which mostly comprises of him standing up straight and hooding his eyes a little. He never claimed to be a great actor.

He can hear the punks upstairs, and treads quietly to avoid being detected. Looks like their leader is on the second floor. He slides along the banister and peeks around the floor on his knees, glancing up and down the hall for any sign of this menacing bike gang leader. The way is clear, but layered with garbage and wall damage. Hibari would never let a school get this bad. Tsuna should find some way to get the Committee in here. This place is a  _wreck_.

"What do we have here?" A voice says from behind him.

Tsuna turns very, very slowly to see the tall, foreboding figure of a teen in a mechanic's jumpsuit, covered in sew-on patches and donned in a kanji-painted armband. His lips twitch nervously. "...Hey."

He's grabbed roughly by the collar and yanked to his feet, and Tsuna actually manages to avoid yelping this time. He keeps his jaw fixed and his face still even as he's dragged down the hall, because he  _does_  heal quickly, and even if they beat him bad enough to put him in the hospital, he'll still have the info for Kusakabe. He just has to... _not die._

Besides, if they hold him hostage, Hibari and the Committee will burn this school to the ground. Not out of concern for him, of course, but they have their pride. Can't have a Committee member helpless to the enemy, after all.

"Get in," the teen demands, and he knocks Tsuna into a room just as filthy and messy as the hallway outside. He grunts on impact, and decides just laying there isn't worth the chance of getting a swift kick to the gut. He climbs to his knees and raises his head to see this boss he got dragged into locating.

The boss is exactly as expected. Muscle-bound, fluffy blond regent hairstyle, and a few hairs growing in on his chin. He looks like middle school is just a kickstart to get himself into high school, and maybe that he failed a few grades on the way up. He's got knuckledusters on his hands, which Tsuna isn't a fan of, and is surrounded by underlings, which Tsuna is even less exited about.

"Well, well, well. What have we got here, now?" The boss says cockily. "You don't go here."

"N...No...I..." Damn. Tsuna's mouth isn't all about the cool and emotionless tone right now. He swallows and tries again. "Er...I was thinking of joining you. I...like bikes. But I don't...didn't...know who the leader was..."

The boss erupts into loud, booming laughter that makes Tsuna flinch. Ah yes. Fear. His only weakness. Right now he doesn't trust his legs to support him if he tried to stand. Why does he keep getting himself into these situations? He just wanted to follow some orders, get it in good with the people who actually like him. He was actually feeling good about life until now. Not just accepting it, feeling  _actually pretty okay_.

And now he's going to die.

"You're a little weed, but you got guts, y'know? What school do you go to?" Right, there are four middle schools in Namimori, and without the gakuran, he's in casual dress. He can sell this. Uh...what was the third school again? He's sure he heard that name  _somewhere_...

"He goes to Namimori," a horrible, evil little punk sneers. "I've seen him. They call him  _Dame-Tsuna_. The guy's totally incompetent."

AND NOW HE'S GOING TO DIE!

"Haha...that so? Sorry little weed. I don't let garbage into my crew. So you'll have to..."

"BOSS!"

Everyone turns to look at the doorway. Tsuna gapes. There's a delinquent standing there, definitely one of the highschoolers, with one arm hanging over...over...

"Hana-chan?" Tsuna whispers.

Hana, donned in Tsuna's gakuran, gives him an acidic look, and steps forward with all the confidence of a professional. "Hey loser. What's your name?"

The boss snarls. "Ya talkin' to me, Namimiddle bitch?"

"Well, duh. Now make it quick. I don't have all day." She folds her arms and narrows her eyes. "I mean...you wouldn't hit a  _lady_ , would you?"

Tsuna stares. She has the confidence of a  _god_. The grit of a _desert_. The foolhardiness of _Tsuna_.

"What's that you got there, honey?" The boss drawls, sickeningly sweet, but obviously pissed off. Hana puts her weight on one leg, jutting out her hip and revealing the watergun she's _still_  holding. He notes, with a sick feeling, that her hands are shaking a little.

"None of your business. Name, please? I _really_  need to get back."

The leader leans back and smirks at her. "The name's Fukuzawa Udo. I'm the leader around these parts. Y'know, we could use someone with your...tenacity. How about you leave that little committee and come round to our side? We'll treat you right."

"Ew, no. Why would I willingly subject myself to you monkeys?" Hana snorts. Her knuckles are white now. "What are you even doing here. It's the weekend. Get a job, if you don't have anything to do. You're certainly fine with breaking all the other school rules!"

"Oh, you got a real wicked tongue on you!" The boss — Udo — drags his hulking form up, grinning like a feral beast. Hana's foot slides back, and her trembling has increased to her shoulders, but she keeps her jaw clenched and doesn't take a step. Tsuna begins to rise, now that no one is focused on him. He can't believe he got Hana dragged into this. Hana! She never gets dragged into  _anything_. She’s _proud_ of it.

"I'm not scared of you, loser. Can I just ditch now? I was only following this dumbass kid in." She gestures to Tsuna. Tsuna isn't sure how scared, nervous little piles of worthless tend to act, so he just widens his eyes a bit and pretends to be shocked.

"I dunno...I think the boys would like someone with your kinda... _zest_."

"Hana-chan," Tsuna says lightly, "I think it's time go now."

"Thought you'd never say," she breathes.

Then she shoots Udo in the face.

Tsuna wants to stop and stare, but she's already shot three more people with pinpoint accuracy and grabbed him by the collar. The jetstream had  _knocked them down_. "Who did you get that gun from?!"

"Friend! Likes to build things! Keep running!" They try to head for the stairs, but it's blocked off by more students. Tsuna cannot believe there are this many people here on a weekend. Hana drags him in the opposite direction, breathing heavily, and Tsuna can feel his pathetic lungs going raw with the sawing effort of sucking in air. Before they can be intercepted by another wall of delinquents, Hana veers left, down another hall.

By the time they realize it's a dead end, it's too late.

"Why...why did you...why did you come in after me..." Tsuna gasps.

The group closes in on them.

"Kyouko...would totally...freak out if you were...if you got hurt..." Hana gasps back, aiming the watergun. "And then she'd be sooo guilty...because she told you to join that...that  _stupid_ Committee."

"Thanks...almost thought you cared for a second..." Tsuna says, flat in tone even through his desperate gasps.

"Oh, I live to please..." says Hana, and she opens fire.

The water shoots out as hard and fast as any bullet, causing two of the delinquents to flail backwards and Tsuna to want the number of the person who built that thing. He takes a step back. Not enough time to send a text, not even an SOS. His back hits the wall, or more specifically, the window. He glances out of it. They're only on the second floor. Maybe...

He tries the window, and it opens. He sticks his head out to get a good look. Oh, definitely.

"Hana-chan!" Is the only warning he gives before he grabs the back of the gakuran, yanks her towards him, and topples them both out the window, into the waiting branches of the bushes directly below.

  
  


* * *

 

 

 "I'm home," says Tsuna.

"Welcome ho- oh, Tsu-kun, you're hurt!" Tsuna's mother rushes over to him, picking sticks and leaves out of his hair. His gakuran is tucked under his arm. He had ensured that Hana landed mostly on him, so while his gut got a bruising, the most damage Hana got was her hair getting mussed up.

"I fell into the bushes," he explains, slipping his (rock-filled) shoes off. "They were very scratchy."

"Oh, I'll go get the first aid kit, wait just a minute," she says quickly, and runs off to the bathroom. Tsuna stares off into space. He probably looks terrible. The branches of the bushes were thick, and made some nasty tears in his clothing and his skin. And he's pretty filthy from crawling around in that school, and also crawling around in the dirt heaving because he had gotten an elbow to the stomach when they both landed. Nasty stuff.

He collapses at the dining table and buries his head in his arms, feeling totally exhausted. Things were supposed to be  _easier_. He managed to take it easy on a battlefield, and then the ante was upped for no good reason. If she weren't still holding that watergun, if that window wasn't there...

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and fires off a text to Kusakabe detailing the name and appearance of the biker gang’s boss. Better to take care of problems as they hit him. Whatever.

"Here we go, Tsu-kun!" His mother chirps, setting down the first aid kit at the table. "Now hold still, I'm going to disinfect them for you."

Tsuna obligingly closes his eyes, removes his shirt, and allows himself to be treated. He flinches at the sting of the cotton swab against his skin, but after a while he gets better at tolerating it. S00n she has him all cleaned and bandaged up.

"...Thank you, mom," Tsuna says with a slight tinge of warmth.

"Don't worry, I'll always take care of my Tsu-kun! Even if you're Dame-Tsuna, mama's always here for you!"

Tsuna rolls his eyes. "I'm not  _that_  'dame'."

"Not anymore," she agrees, cupping his cheek. "You're my big, strong, man."

A rare, small smile creeps up onto his face, and he can feel his cheeks heat with pleasure. "U-um. Thanks. Mom."

"Now, what was I forgetting..." She murmurs to herself, closing the first aid kit. After a moment, she abruptly stands straight. "Oh goodness! That's right! Your father called!"

"Really? He never calls." Tsuna is genuinely surprised. His dad is a strictly postcard kind of man. Tsuna hasn't seen his face in what is it, two years now? He's made so little contact in the past year alone that Tsuna was wondering if he went missing or something.

"It looks like he finally went somewhere with a signal for once," she says giddily. "He's actually still on the line, I forgot. Let me go get the phone, he hasn't heard your voice in so long!"

Tsuna's eyebrows shoot up. Tsuna? Talk to his dad? Talking to dad? Talk? Dad? Dadtalk?

"Uh. I think I'll just go to bed. The whole bush incident was pretty exhausting. And maybe do my homework...Y'know..." Tsuna edges off to the side.

"Oh, nonsense, he misses you so much! Hold on." His mother takes off, and Tsuna stands rigidly in the doorway as he hears her greet his dad, and gibber on excitedly, and her voice comes in closer and Tsuna feels a distinct, piercing note of terror that has more to do with teenage awkwardness than foreboding.

She hands him the phone. His emotions flatline entirely. He puts the phone to his ear.

"...Hey, dad."

His mom bustles out of the room, giggling to herself, leaving Tsuna alone in this conversation. He'd be nervous if he hadn't just short-circuited. As it is, the only thing he can focus on is the breathing on the other line, tinged with a smile.

"Hey, Tsuna! Your papa's missed you so much! How are you doing sport? Your grades going up? You better not drop out before I see you next!"

_Annoying._

Tsuna squeezes his eyes shut. Breathes in through his nostrils. Breaths out.

"Uh. Not really. I might need to ask my friends for help."

"Great, great. It's always good to have friends to rely on. Anything interesting happening lately?"

Tsuna quirks his head, and feels strangely ambivalent to the concept of honesty at this point. While a normal person wouldn't feel comfortable sharing all the dirty details, it’s only natural that a teenager with a really complicated relationship with his absent (and overly-attached) father would be a little looser with his lips.

Besides, there's nothing his dad can do about it. Not like he's ever done anything for them besides a few dollars in their pocket. If he's mafia, he can take a surprise or two. And if he doesn't like Tsuna's answer, he had it coming. People send emails now. Instant messaging. He could have been speaking to them more regularly than a few postcards, a few letters.

A faint smile, dead-eyed and flat on his face, creeps into his expression.

"Not much. I joined a school gang. We went to war today. It was pretty interesting."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Culture Notes:**  
>  _Bousouzoku_ \- Delinquents who illegally modify their bikes and intentionally modify the bikes to cause more noise and draw more attention. Often fall into the good old eighties stereotypes of delinquent youth, with permed+bleached hair, mechanic's jumpsuits, and military jackets/insignias. Tend to be huge thrillseekers and right-wing nationalists, seeing as they're a splitoff of the yankee subculture.
> 
>  _Shouwa era_ \- In the Japanese year-keeping system, Shouwa era denotes the years 1926~1989. The early 80s gave birth to the 'yankee' juvenile delinquent subculture that prevailed through the 80s and 90s, with flagrant theft, dress code violations, peace-disturbing, and permed hairdoes. The Namimori Disciplinary Committee is a parody of this culture, since they're a bunch of delinquents hell bent on keeping the peace. Since the manga takes place in the early 00s, where most of those stereotypes have died out, Tsuna is saying the scene he came upon is extremely retro.


	3. The Introduction Of A Home Tutor

The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and the street is bright and full of smiling faces. It is a good day to be Sasagawa Kyouko's friend, Tsuna thinks.

Kyouko, being the best friend a person could ever ask for, immediately accepted that he would have to cancel their Saturday plans, and then proceeded to insist that to make up for it, they could spend all of Sunday together! He feels like his terrible lasting mood from yesterday has been blown away, like dust in the wind. Hana is obviously coming, because she had decided to be Kyouko's shadow one day and never looked back. Tsuna has no idea what inspired it (though he has a sneaking suspicion it might actually be his fault), but he's not particularly bothered. Hana is usually a good sport about a lot of things, and he doubts she'll actively attempt to ruin their day.

Today, they're going to the arcade. Tsuna is thankful for this — all the running around he did yesterday is making his muscles ache now. This way, at least, he only has to worry about his hands and upper arms. If someone slapped him on the back right now, he would most assuredly  _die_.

"You are not seriously wearing that in public," Hana dryly observes.

Tsuna looks down innocently at his neon t-shirt with a very colourful acid-trip visual of a sloth on it, topped with the gakuran and coupled with unassuming blue jeans. "Is there something wrong with my outfit?"

" _So many things_. But why are you wearing the gakuran around in public?"

"Do you have any idea how differently people treat me while I'm wearing this? Besides, I wasn't wearing it yesterday, and I want them to hesitate if they think kidnapping is an option."

Hana pales. "Wait, is it?"

"He seemed interested in your charming personality, but I doubt the group will last long enough to identify you, report it, and organize a kidnapping. I'm only being careful since I actually mingle. I told Kusakabe-senpai about the identity of their leader already, so things should be all sorted out soon. He was very impressed with me."

"If I wasn't there, you'd be dead meat!"

"Yeah. Thanks, Hacchan."

" _Don't call me that_!"

But then Kyouko arrives, and they are forced to end their conversation, lest worry her sick with hypothetical gang activity. They do, in fact, make it to the arcade without any kidnappings afoot. Kyouko drags Tsuna and Hana to the photo booth, gearing up to get in some Friendship Time before they inevitably split up to play the games most suited to them. Hana is clearly used to this with the way she easily slides in, but Tsuna, who has miraculously managed to survive an entire lifetime without even touching a photo booth, awkwardly perches on the edge of the seat next to Kyouko and eyes the screen warily.

"It's okay, it'll tell you when the pictures are about to be taken," Kyouko cheerfully reassured him. Tsuna is unconvinced. He wonders if he could use the countdown warning as a reference on when to slide all the way off the seat and hit the floor.

Kyouko drags him in further so he's sitting down properly. Damn. Foiled again.

Kyouko puts in the money and rapidly selects a few options with an expert hand, with Hana making a few suggestions. When they're finished, they set it up to take a photo. Tsuna narrows his eyes at the contraption. He doesn't deal well with photos. Especially crowded ones.

_5...4...3...2...1..._

_SNAP!_

Tsuna tries not to blink at the sudden flash. It starts counting down again, and Hana and Kyouko make funny faces. Tsuna grimaces. _SNAP._  Next one, they hold each other, and Tsuna sits awkwardly off to the side.  _SNAP._  Kyouko wraps her arms around each of them and gives the screen a peace sign. Hana and Tsuna each give their own peace sign. SNAP. Hana reaches over to grab Tsuna's cheek and yanks it, grinning slyly, and Kyouko laughs and tries to get her to stop.  _SNAP_.

"Now to edit," Hana chirps. Their five photos pop up on screen.

Silence.

"How did you manage to have the exact same face in _all_ of them?" Hana glares at Tsuna.

"Uhm...he's kind of making a face in the second one! And then you pulled his cheek...so it's only three photos, really!"

"He's like a mannequin! We need to spruce the sloth creep up!"

"Do whatever you want, Hacchan," Tsuna sighs.

Apparently she took that as a challenge.

Outside the photo booth, a strip of pictures is printed. There's an awkward silence as the trio looks down at them. Hana had gone full out editing Tsuna, giving him exaggerated eyes, a cute blush, little accessory stickers, and even bling. Their own images, on the other hand, were mostly untouched besides airbrush and glow filters.

"Hana..." Kyouko mutters. Hana looks proud of herself.

"Anyway, we should try some games out. That's why we're here, right?" Tsuna says, eager to change the subject.

"Oh, right! I wanted to try the new dance game," Kyouko perks up.

The three of them split up, directions determined. Hana goes to try out the zombie mansion shooting game in the corner, Kyouko goes to the huge dancing pad machine, and Tsuna goes to the nearest racing game. He gingerly takes a seat, pops in a few coins, and...

Sucks terribly at it.

After getting sixth place, he slides out of his seat and decides to go to something else. Like the crane game, maybe! He slides past a few people, puts in a coin, readies the stick, and...

Sucks even more.

Tsuna stares down at the joystick with a pinched frown. He had forgotten how terrible he is at every task known to man. He must have been letting his lack of failure in the Committee get to him. Wouldn't do to get a big head, after all. Maybe there's a game for kids around here that could distract him...But wouldn't failing terribly at a game for kids be even more mortifying?

He stares at the ceiling. It's a hard life for a pathetic teenager.

Finally, he reasons that if he's going to do anything, it may as well make someone else feel better about themselves. He takes up the second slot at the zombie mansion shooting game, where Hana is wrapping up a hallway of the pixellated undead. She takes a while to fire, but when she hits, its always a headshot. The numbers at the top of the screen are consistently rolling upwards.

"Finally take an interest in marksmanship?"

"Considering I joined a gang, it might be useful to know how to fire a gun," Tsuna jibes. Hana snorts.

"If you get in a situation where you would have to shoot a gun, I'll save them the trouble and kill you myself."

"Nice. Thanks." Tsuna pops in 500 yen (exorbitant pricing!) and aims the plastic rifle. Hana pauses to glance at him, but turns back to her game without commenting. Tsuna's eyes flick to her, then back to the screen. He presses the forward motion pedal and advances into the dark, decrepit, low-polygon building.

"...Don't your parents worry?" Hana says after a moment. The question sparks something in Tsuna, and he's suddenly strung tight, so tight he accidentally fires a shot directly into the first zombie's head.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I get why you want to hide it from Kyouko. She hates fighting. But you can't exactly hide gang activity from your parents. I mean, it's  _you_."  _Bang bang_. She clears out a staircase.

Tsuna pushes forward, tries to shiver out the new tension, and failing terribly. Two new enemies show up on screen. With a grunt of frustration, he fires one in the chest and one in the head. "Mom's fine with it. She just doesn't want me hurt, but she trusts me."

"Your mom is a huge ditz," Hana says. Another string of gunshots. "I bet she just pretends it isn't happening."

 _Would explain why she doesn't know what dad’s up to,_  Tsuna thinks. Another surge of bitterness. He releases three shots, dispersing three enemies, and surges forward until he comes upon the next wave, which he removes just as quickly.

"And your dad? You have one, don't you?"

"Are you trying to convince me to convince the Committee?" _BANGBANGBANGBANG_

"I'm worried about Kyouko, not you. If she finds out—"

"—She can trust me to not get myself in a brawl. I'm not a physical person."

"So if you got into a situation like yesterday you'd just lie down and take the beating."

"No, Hana-chan, I would just  _jump out the window_ , like a  _sane person_ ," Tsuna sighs.

"So  _do_  you have a dad?"

Tsuna unleashes a hail of bullets on another wave of enemies. This time he imagines them all with his dad's face. " _Yes_."

"Did you tell him?"

"What's the point? He's on another continent right now. There's nothing he can do to stop me."

"Yeah, but did you tell him?"

Tsuna ramps down on the pedal, and his character flies down two hallways to get to the next wave. The tension in his core has heated up into full-blown anger now, and he feels like he's feeling everything in perfect, _furious_  clarity. He aims the gun and lands a headshot on ten zombies in a three-second timeframe, pounds down on the pedal to keep rushing forward.

"...Yes."

Hana is looking at him again. Her foot is hesitating on the pedal. "He didn't approve, then?"

"No," Tsuna grits, zooming through the building. He's already hit the staircase he saw Hana at before he began. "He didn't  _care_."

"What? Really? Does he not know of the Disciplinary Committee?"

"He wouldn't, so I made it perfectly clear. And he,"  _ **BANG**_ , "didn't,"  _ **BANG**_ , " _care._ "

"Your dad's a jerk," Hana says.

_BANG BANG BANGBANGBANGBANG **BABABABABABABANG**_

The bullet sounds meld in together as they both hit a wave. Tsuna is only vaguely aware that it's the same one.

"He  _laughed_  and said that I better not be getting my girlfriend in trouble," Tsuna spits. His skin feels especially sensitive, and it prickles against the sensation of the plastic, his clothes, his own weight pressing against the arcade apparatus. "I don't even  _have_  a girlfriend. I never had a girlfriend! Even if I did, he wouldn't know about it, because I wouldn't tell him, and he'd have no way of knowing because he's in _shitty_  Italy with his  _shitty_  boss having a  _shitty old time_!"

Hana stops cold to stare at him. Through the corner of his eye, he can see her alternating between gaping at him and his screen.

"You...really, er...don't get along with your dad?"

"If he's going to PRETEND to be a doting dad, then he ought to _BACK IT UP!_ " Tsuna roars, and plows through a wave of twenty, alternating between going forwards and backwards rapidly to clear the entire room. He advances blindly, only barely noticing that Hana has gotten a _GAME OVER_  with a new high score. She's still staring at him.

"...Have you _ever_  been angry?"

"NO! I was born a robot, and do not understand human feelings! BLEEP!"  _ **BANG** "BLOOP!" **BANG**_

By now, more patrons have begun to edge in a little closer. Tsuna's eyes are glued to the screen, so he can't tell how many. He keeps pushing through rooms and steadily increasing zombie numbers, with new breeds of zombie mixed in. Just his dad isn't enough. He imagines them with hypothetical mafia faces, black suits and cold expressions, just  _trying_  to stop him. He won't let trash like this stop him.

Who need a dad, anyway? Plenty of people don't have dads. He technically doesn't have one. Not anymore. What he has is an illusion constructed out of periodic postcards and vague letters. If he's in the mafia, he'll probably be dead within the next ten years anyway. Tsuna is honestly better off cutting his losses. If he really wants the Sawada household protected, the good favour of the Disciplinary Committee would be more than adequate. Hibari  _owns_  Namimori. Tsuna once heard that because he protects the hospital, Hibari can even beat up low-risk patients. If anyone in a black suit showed up he'd call every Committee member within ten blocks and have them clean up.

Tsuna releases the pressure on the forward pedal and squeezes his eyes shut, taking in short, even breaths. He doesn't even  _remember_  the last time his dad visited, and yet—

  
  


  _"Haha! C'mon, buddy, you can't really be getting in trouble this early?"_

_"It's an occupational hazard."_

_"Well, I bet you can stumble your way through it! Hahaha! Oh, but don't be getting your girlfriend in any trouble, okay? A man's gotta protect his woman!"_

_"...It's okay. I ended up having to jump out of a window, though. Not sure what I would have done if the bushes weren't there."_

_"That's thinking outside the box! Just what I'd expect from my own kid!"_

_"...Well...between facing off between a guy on a bike with a steel bar and the guy leading the group, I guess the window wasn't a huge deal..."_

_"Ah, damn, the lil' Tunafish I knew wouldn't be able to do half that. You've been really active since I last visited, huh?"_

_"...Yeah. Guess I was."_

  
  


—could it have killed him to be even remotely worried about him? What's the point of acting like an overbearing father if he just lets Tsuna put himself in danger like that? If he mentioned that he had put Hana in danger, would he even  _blink_?

The foul mood that had just settled dead in his stomach yesterday is flaring to life now, sulfur and spit and a little hurt. He had expected his dad to be distant from the start, and only dropped the scenario to tease his father. He was just going to tell him it was joke and there was nothing to worry about. Apparently there was no need for Tsuna to reassure him to begin with.

He didn't care.

With a sniffle, Tsuna targets the last enemy with blurry eyes and lays bullet after bullet into its bloated, twisted body. It collapses in a heap of blood and muscle. The screen goes black.

 _ **YOU WIN**_  lights up on screen. He wipes his eyes and glares at the letters telling him he just set a new high score. His is two digits more than the scores underneath it. A screen prompts him to enter his name on the katakana board using the gun. He fires. He has something he's competent with now, and if he just focuses on that, everything can go back to being background noise.

ヒショ

_(hisho - secretary)_

He feels the tension seep out of him, and now his limbs feel oddly weak. He actually has to aim carefully in order to hit the OK button with his crosshairs, and even then it takes three tries. Finally, he relaxes against the back ramp and places his gun back into the slot.

There's a moment of sweet, self-reflective silence.

Then the room erupts into applause.

Tsuna spins around to see an impressive crowd squeezed in around the shooting game, all staring at him. He flinches back, and seeks out Hana if only for her comforting normality, but she's gaping at him like he just grew a second head. He looks at the screens again, seeking an explanation, and it's only then that he realizes.

Hana's high score is 104,500. Tsuna's is 343,027.

"Oh," says Tsuna. "Hm."

He  _absolutely_  should not have been able to do that.  _Especially_  when distracted. To hell with 300,000, he should have struggled to hit  _700_. There's no way he managed to do this all by himself. He wonders if the hitboxes on this game were broken, so whenever he fired he hit  _something_ , but something eats at the back of his mind, reminding him of the strange tension he had mistaken for anger before he got  _really_  pissed.

It was almost familiar. He has no idea why.

Tsuna hops down and catches Kyouko's eye, ignoring the noisy group of preteen boys trying to get his attention. She's clapping just as enthusiastically as the rest of them, proud of his bizarre success, as if it’s only natural he’d win. The sight makes Tsuna smile softly. At least there's _someone_ he can count on to care. He's sure if he told Kyouko about the Disciplinary Committee's adventures, she'd strap him to a gurney and cart him around from class to class to make absolutely sure that he wouldn't get into trouble again. Maybe even sent up camp in his backyard. There’s a reason Kyouko managed to be his friend for this long. She can never  _not_  care.

"I'm, uh...not feeling too well," Tsuna says weakly, giving the people around him uncertain looks. "Is it alright if we move on?"

"Oh, of course! Why don't we celebrate at a restaurant! I'm pretty sure that game's really new, but you did so good at it! Is it because the Committee taught you?"

"Well, I certainly know how to stay on my toes hanging out with them..." Tsuna mutters under his breath.

Hana hops down to join them, clearing off the rest of the patrons with a sweeping glare as she does so. "C'mon, Kyouko, I got a high score too. Where's my celebratory meal, huuhh～?"

"If we go to the cake shop, I'll let you have the biggest slice, Hacchan," Tsuna replies curtly. He can feel his emotion sliding away again. Off in the distance, where they belong.

"Don't call me that!"

"Sorry, Hacchan."

"Urgh! See if I pay for your bill, Sloth Creep!"

"That's cold, Hacchan."

Kyouko giggles, and the three of them leave the arcade, trailing wide-eyed gamers in their wake.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Being on the Committee is  _great_  now.

Everyone is suddenly treating him respect, like an old friend. The back-pats are increased to the point of excess, but they aren't really putting on the pressure when it's time for a snack run, and they actually invite him in on conversations. Kusakabe smiled at him. Hibari said 'secretary' and _nodded slightly_. Tsuna feels like a damn celebrity. He could kiss Kyouko for having such good and excellent ideas. He has never been more satisfied with his life. It might actually offset how upset he is at his dad. Eventually.

If the arcade had more students from Namimori middle when he performed his spontaneous videogame miracle, he bets there would be normal students thinking he was cool, too. Life is good.

At lunch, Tsuna slides across the counter to get at the yakisoba sandwich and runs it back up to the upperclassman Keitarou, before turning back and high-tailing it down to the tree outside to meet up with Kyouko-and-sometimes-Hana. From what he can see, today is a Hana day, as the dark-haired girl is loitering around near the pathway. Tsuna jogs up to them, and she abruptly sits down. He cocks his head. Was she waiting for him?

"Tsuna!" Kyouko calls, waving. "Come here, my mom made up something nice for my bentou. I'll trade you!"

"Sure." Tsuna skids in on the grass and whips out his own bentou box. He opens it to reveal the food his mother cooked, seeing as he has the competency of a drunk infant in the kitchen. The trio quickly trade side dishes, and compliment each other on what they got. Even Hana looks less hostile than usual. Man,  _everything's_  going great for Tsuna lately.

They quickly move into chatting. Tsuna aggressively turns the subject away from his skills at shooting games. No matter how much he thinks about it, he's sure he could never replicate the results from yesterday, and it's really better off put to rest. Instead, he veers the conversation towards Hana's mysterious gun-making benefactor. She assures him that her contact only modifies things, and is really better at arts, crafts, and automated machinery. Apparently the gun was just a bit of dabbling based on something they had seen in an online how-to, which Tsuna finds both terrifying and intriguing. Kyouko wonders if she should ask for tips on making her brother's boxing gloves more secure and safe for the fury of his shining fists. Tsuna doesn't have the heart to tell her that there is probably no known earth material capable of withstanding Sasagawa Ryouhei.

Not just his fists.  _All of him._

They're so deep in conversation that none of them note the figure rushing towards them, and by then, it's too late.

Tsuna receives a hard slap to his back that sends both him and his bentou flying, spilling all over the grass and Kyouko's lap. She lets out a shriek of surprise, and a shocked Hana automatically moves to brush her clean. Tsuna groans and slowly gets back up.  _He should have known_.

"Whoops! Sorry about that, shrimp!"

He looks up to see Shintarou, a boy in second year and a proud Committee member. His pompadour actually looks very normal and traditional on his head. Must have short hair.

Shintaro is blushing and looking excited at Kyouko, revealing an enormous hole in Tsuna's reasoning of this being the best job ever; now that everyone's friends with him, they feel comfortable approaching Tsuna's own friends. Specifically, the  _school idol_.

"Sorry to you too, Sasagawa-chan," the delinquent says quickly, whipping out a handkerchief and passing it to her. She smiles at him and uses it to brush the remainder of the rice from her person. Tsuna scratches his head, still lost in thought. How did he miss this possibility? Better yet, what exactly was deterring people? If anything, shouldn’t Shintarou be more wary around Tsuna now that he’s reliable and fun to be around? Tsuna has childhood friend dibs. This is awful.

"It's okay, I'm sure you didn't mean to," Kyouko laughs.

"Yeah, it's Tsuna's fault for having a rubber spine," Hana snorts.

Tsuna raises his hands. "Guilty as charged. Did you need something, Shintarou-senpai?"

"Oh!" The delinquent turns even more pink and straightens slightly, glancing periodically at Kyouko. "Well- y'know, I was wondering if you might wanna learn a few more of the ropes...there's some things they don't teach the secretary, you know...the girls can come too!"

"Pass. Free lunch," Tsuna quickly dismisses.

Shintarou deflates. "O-Oh, well..."

Out of the corner of his eye, Tsuna notes, to his confusion, someone brazenly wearing something against the school uniform regulations. On school grounds. He's not even sure if this guy is a real student; Tsuna certainly hasn't ever seen him before. He frowns. Does this guy _want_  to die?

Shintarou follows Tsuna's gaze to the newcomer and mimics his frown. He straightens and shoots Kyouko a winning smile. "Looks like there's some riffraff to clean up. Don't worry, Sasagawa-chan, I'll make sure he doesn't bother you none."

"Oh, uh, thank you!" She smiles again, and Shintarou straightens so far that he walks like he has a steel rod in his spine. Tsuna watches in mild interest as the Committee member intercepts the mysterious suicidal teenage newcomer.

"Hey, those clothes are against Namimori Middle regulation. Do you even go here?"

"Nope," says the teen. And he — as if to _prove_  how suicidal he is —  _lights up a cigarette_.

"Oi," Shintarou hisses, angry now. "No smoking on the school premises. Besides that, you're underage."

"That's none of your business, is it? I'm not even attending this school right now,  _am I_?" The teen bites back.

"Then you're also trespassing. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

By now the trio has lost interest in their lunches, and are leaning forward to listen in on the conversation with thinly-veiled interest. Tsuna has seen a few of these interceptions before, and they're almost always clean, but he's not sure if he's ever seen anyone who straight up didn't know what the hell he was getting into. He can't help but find it intriguing.

"What if I don't, huh?"

"Then I will have to forcefully remove you for disrupting the peace of Namimori Middle School!" Shintarou spares Kyouko a proud glance as he said this. Tsuna narrows his eyes. That would have been cute if it weren't aimed at his best friend, who Tsuna hopes won't be interested in dating until she at least grew out of her interest in Tsuna’s friendship first. Can't he hit on Hana instead?

"I'd like to see you try," the teen hisses, and he pulls out...

He pulls out...

Tsuna quickly turns around, pulls out his device, and taps a quick message while casually eating his meal. He nudges the still-staring Kyouko to get her attention. "That's none of our business."

"But..."

He nudges Hana next. "That's none of our business. Right Hacchan?"

She grimaces at the nickname, but pats Kyouko on the shoulder. "That's none of our business, Kyouko."

"I-I guess," she worries.

Tsuna hits send. A few seconds later, he can hear alarmed cries as Hibari Kyouya leaps down from the roof. He gently puts an egg roll in his mouth and chews deliberately, a portrait of peace and tranquility. Hana does much the same.

Kyouko squirms. "U-uhm...I think he's going to..."

"Kyouko," Tsuna says gently, "that young man has pockets full of dynamite.  _That's none of our business_."

She sighs. "I guess."

And they peacefully eat their lunch to the soothing background track of a mysterious dynamite-wielding teenager being bitten to death. Just another ordinary day at Namimori Middle School, nothing to see here.

This place is such a headache.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Day 2 is pretty much second verse, same as the first, but with more teenage boys hoping to get some quality time with Tsuna's friendcrew. Tsuna doesn't appreciate this much, and is sure to send out some barbed words about what they're doing with their time. Hana actually seems to be enjoying the extra attention, but she keeps shooting the school gate nervous glances, so he supposes she's still worried about being kidnapped. He has to reassure her three times that Kusakabe told him he got it taken care of.

Tsuna actually forgets about the incident from yesterday completely until he takes a detour to the convenience store after school. It’s not the one he usually goes to, but he wanted something cool to drink, and the store has a distinct and totally inexplicable ‘hallowed grounds’ atmosphere to it that makes him think buying his drink there would probably feel twice as satisfying and slightly sacred, like being an 8-year-old in a spare-change snack shop. He was only planning on taking a minute tops, but his speedy purchase plans are ruined when he sees him.

 _Dynamite Guy_.

He's crouched by the instant food, clutching his stomach and glaring at the cup ramen, occasionally giving the microwave dinners an accusing stare. There's a box of nutrient bars tucked in his armpit, and his teeth are latched so firmly onto his cigarette it looks like he is perilously close to biting the butt clean off. Tsuna can do little but stand there like a buffoon and gape at the strange, out-of-place image. How the hell does one afford dynamite and not instant meals?

Dynamite Guy's hand hovers uncertainly over a cup of vegetable ramen. He clucks his tongue and hovers over to the microwave dinner. Then a glance at the pricetag, and back to the cup ramen. This is the saddest thing Tsuna has ever seen in his entire life. He has been fully plunged into a cheesy daytime drama. It is his punishment for not sucking at life for once.

He takes a few hesitant steps forward. "Having trouble deciding?"

"Wha-huh?" The teen spins around and locks eyes with Tsuna, who notes with some surprise that the guy has pale green eyes. Then again, with the elongated face...he looks Japanese, but he's probably half. Tsuna wonders if he's from out of town or out of country. He can't be native to Namimori if he was stirring up trouble publicly like that. Even Tsuna's bullies took the trouble to antagonize him in dark corners.

"The ramen is crap, but it'll fill you up in a pinch," Tsuna continues, trying to pretend this guy doesn't have sticks of dynamite in his pocket. "If you're not expecting any money any time soon, the ramen is fine enough, but you shouldn't rely on it."

"Oh, I..." He relaxes for a second, then goes tense. His cheeks turn an unbecoming shade of scarlet. "I-I don't need advice! I can shop by myself."

"Just trying to help. If you need an extra 500 yen or something-"

" _I didn't ask for your charity_!" The boy spits.

Tsuna's eyebrow twitches.

"Cool." He takes his basket and sets his arm down on the end of the shelf. Without breaking eye contact with the teen, he deliberately drags the arm all the way down, dropping all the ramen cups into his basket until it's overflowing. Then, still not breaking eye contact, he walks backwards to the counter and declares "I'm buying all of these."

The teen looks torn between confusion and horror.

Tsuna only turns to pay for his excessive purchase, which is placed into two bags. Tsuna holds up his prize to the mysterious starving delinquent. Dynamite Guy has his hands hovering over his pockets now. Tsuna quirks his head, gently, almost mockingly, and negotiates in the traditional time-honoured Disciplinary Committee technique of completely unnecessary antagonism.

"Fight me for them."

Dynamite Guy gapes. " _What_?"

"You heard me. Punch my lights out and take my groceries."

"I'm not going to fight you for a bunch of ramen cups!"

"Why not? They're free."

"I-It's...I mean..." The poor bastard looks genuinely lost.

"I asked you to fight me. It's not assault that way."

"Yes it is," the clerk whispers.

"Shut up," says Tsuna.

"You're not gonna call your boss on me or anything?" The teen asks, because yes, this sounds like an obvious trap, but he's starting to eye the ramen cups hungrily now.

Tsuna sighs. As much as he would _really_ enjoy handing the bag over so this poor soul could spend his money on better things, pride corrupts such innocent gestures. There's no way he wouldn’t stretch this pain-in-the-ass situation out unnecessarily.

He takes the cigarette out of Dynamite Guy’s mouth and puts it out on the shelf, staring him down.

“ _I don’t have all day._ ”

It works. Dynamite Guy drags him out to the parking lot by the collar, and Tsuna gives the clerk a thumbs-up as he goes.

  
  


* * *

 

 

"I'm home."

"Oh,  _no_ , Tsuna, how did you get a black eye?" Tsuna's mother cries in horror.

"Being a good Samaritan is a road with all pain and little gain," Tsuna says sagely.

In the end, Tsuna threw a punch, stumbled, and got socked in the face. Then Dynamite Guy yelled at him for a while. Tsuna is never doing something nice for a stranger again. He thought he had gotten better at dealing with delinquents, but there was no real way Tsuna could think of to handle the guy besides begging to get mugged.

He's not sure why he wanted to help Dynamite Guy to begin with, considering he wields sticks of actual dynamite. (Unless they were cleverly disguised fireworks.) Something about him just seemed...kinda harmless. Some part of Tsuna simply couldn't see him as a threat. He was just a poor unfortunate in need of a hand.

Tsuna has too many feelings lately. He wishes he could remember how to kill them.

Tsuna's mother carefully treats his eye and doesn't ask any questions, and Tsuna wonders if this is the willful ignorance Hana mentioned. He doesn't mind. The important part is that she cares about him. It really does feel good to be showered in positive attention every now and then.

Once she puts a little gauze patch on it, she stands back and gives him a chipper smile. "There we are. You better be more careful, I don't want to have to keep buying more first-aid supplies!"

"Yeah, of course," Tsuna sighs.

"Well...Oh! That's right! Guess what, Tsu-kun! I've hired a home tutor!"

"Oh?" His grades  _are_  pretty terrible. He doubts he'll be allowed to stay in the Disciplinary Committee if this keeps up. "Sounds good."

"Let's see...I have the flier somewhere over...here!" She pulls out a piece of paper and begins to quickly read through it. "Mmhm, mhm...It's a contract for a live-in tutor, one year tuition, bringing your child to new heights...doesn't that sound wonderful?"

Tsuna scratches his head. "Do we have room for something like that?"

"Oh, don't worry, we have two spare bedrooms, and more than enough money! Anyway, we're having an appointment this afternoon. He should be here within thirty minutes, actually."

"I guess that's-"

_Knock knock._

"Oh, he must be here already! Tsu-kun, tidy yourself up, you have to look ready to learn!"

"Right..." Tsuna adjusts his clothes and brushes the dirt off his pants. Maybe with a tutor, he'll even be elevated to the level of a normal student. Just think; Tsuna in college, completely average and not a failure at all.

"Come in, come in, you'll love my Tsu-kun, he's a perfect student, trust me," his mother titters. She comes in, trailing...

Tsuna cocks his head.

Dynamite Guy looks like he's seen a ghost.

His silvery hair has been slicked back and he's wearing glasses and an open suit now, but Tsuna definitely recognizes Dynamite Guy. Right down to the cheap metal jewellery and rigid posture and unnecessary smoking. What the hell, is he  _stalking_  Tsuna? Well, no — he looks just as shocked to see Tsuna as Tsuna is mildly surprised to see him.

"Guess you don't need the ramen cups after all, then."

Dynamite Guy's expression doesn't change, but his cheeks flare pink. He glances at Tsuna's mother in desperation, but she doesn't seem to notice there's a problem.

"Well, Gokudera-kun, this is Tsunayoshi, my son. Tsu-kun, this is Gokudera Hayato, the tutor I told you about!"

"We've met," Tsuna say dryly.

"I-I-I..." He stutters. Seeing Tsuna's lack of reaction, it sinks down into cold fury. "You-!"

"Really? Where?" Tsuna's mother asks.

"Just an hour ago, actually. I was impressed by his sense of pride."

Dynamite Guy, now known as Gokudera, looks like he wants to strangle Tsuna right then and there. Tsuna blinks up at him.

"Well, anyway, if you've already made a good impression, I'll just go and sign that contract!" His mother chirps, and she proceeds to pat him on the back, snatch the cigarette out of his mouth, and put it out on the ashtray they use to hold pistachio shells.

"W-wait, I dont- I mean- this guy is-" Gokudera looks desperately between Tsuna's mother, who he seems to like, and Tsuna, who he seems to want to kill. Tsuna leans his chin on one hand and continues to look at Gokudera, waiting for some coherent opinion to come out of his mouth. Tsuna still doesn't really feel any threat from him, despite the hostility rolling off him in waves, and does not feel the need to shrink like he does when Hibari so much as glances in his direction.

"Aaand...there! Tsu-kun, could you show Gokudera-kun around the house?"

"Sure. Come on, Hayato."

Gokudera lets out an aborted shriek Tsuna was sure only Hana could make. He makes a mental note to continue calling him by his first name.

As soon as they're out of earshot, Hayato slams Tsuna against the wall. Tsuna is impressed; he works fast. "What's the deal? You think this is  _funny_?"

"Am I laughing," Tsuna deadpans.

"So what, you set me up so you can mock me just like at the store? Beloved pampered son can do no wrong, right?"

"Uh. No. I didn't even know you. I just figured you'd yell at me if I tried to give you the bags."

Hayato, against all earthly logic, becomes even more red-faced than before. "I would  _not_!"

"Yes, you would. Don't touch me." Tsuna gently pushes against Hayato's wrist. Hayato tenses, but doesn't release him.

"Do you really expect me to believe a punk like you just decided to give out free food to some random stranger?"

"Have you never experienced basic human kindness?  _Yes_. You're worse than Hana. Do I have to cry and sob about how much I felt for your plight?"

"And if I don't believe you?"

"I don't know, punch me again? I thought you were here to teach me," Tsuna shrugs.

With an beastly growl, he pushes away from Tsuna and marches down the hall to barge into his room.

"How do you know where my room is?"

"None of your business!" Hayato snaps.

Ah, yes. The balance of the world. Great fortune cannot happen without great misfortune. Tsuna cannot experience any good in the world without an equal level of pain-in-the-ass. Well, as long as Tsuna isn't being tortured or anything, he supposes he can roll with this.

Tsuna steps into his room and sees Hayato carefully laying out some sort of thin notebook on his desk. He peers around him to see it's a workbook.

"This is...?"

"...It's to measure your skill level. I wrote the questions myself," Hayato mutters.

"At least you came prepared." Tsuna reviews the notes.

And reviews them some more.

Aaaaand reviews them some more.

"Hayato?"

"Don't refer to me so casually! You should call me Gokudera- _sensei_!"

Tsuna ignores him. "What grade level would you say these questions are at?"

"Huh? Uh..." He quits his over-aggressive machismo routine long enough to look unsure of himself. "Well, I just wrote down questions that seem easy to me."

Tsuna squints at the questions that are obviously at university level.

"Hayato...while you're definitely a genius..." He places the workbook back down on the desk. "...You're not a very good teacher."

Hayato flinches, and Tsuna feels a sting of remorse. That might have been a little to abrupt a dismissal. He's obviously trying hard.  _Too_  hard. At  _everything_. A home tutor  _and_  a delinquent _and_  poor as dirt, introducing himself by a coupling of brazen threats and exemplary shows of genius. He doesn't seem to have any idea what he's doing, but he sure is doing it. That's worth a little respect.

...On the other hand, Tsuna's not sure how to  _stop_  being so blunt. Kyouko usually just rolls with it, and Hana likes to snark back. He's socially stunted otherwise. This is unprecedented new territory.

Hayato thankfully buckles before Tsuna does. "F-fine...If you don't like it, I'll just make a better one. Where's your school textbook?"

"Are you sure? What happened to slamming me against the wall?"

"It's fine, okay? I'm your home tutor. It's my job to get this right. You won't learn anything if I don't do it properly," He grumbles.

Tsuna shrugs and digs his school textbook out of his bag.

Over the next twenty minutes, Hayato reviews Tsuna's curriculum and mumbles about it being _too easy_  and _for children_. Focused like this, pushing up his glasses ever so often, Hayato almost looks like a respectable tutor. Tsuna just hopes that he can actually teach at some point, or else this entire situation would be awfully silly.

...Not that it isn't already. Tsuna feels a familiar tension singing through him. Why is it that a starving delinquent kicking up trouble in Namimori middle would decide to be a live-in home tutor? Especially when he clearly has no idea what the average curriculum of a middle school student is like? He's obviously trying his best to execute his poorly-considered life plans, but  _why_?

Hayato had no idea what Tsuna looked like. So is the tutor thing just an unlucky coincidence? Tsuna squeezes his eyes shut. No...There's been too many unfortunate events lined up for it to be that simple, and he must have been at Namimori for a reason. A boy old enough to be a middle school student, scouting out Namimiddle, is clearly poor as dirt, definitely a delinquent from the poorer end of town, and has a hostile attitude towards him...

He tenses. Udo or someone in the power vacuum must have sent this guy in to check up on the organization (and possibly individual person) responsible for dethroning him. It only makes sense. In that case, he  _really_  should have listened to Hana. She obviously knew they were dealing with a serious threat; she wouldn't have been needling him to ditch the Committee otherwise. It was careless of him to ignore that.

Dame-Tsuna messes it up again. Can't have fortune without misfortune. What a joke.

"Hey. Hayato." Tsuna prompts. Well, there's no harm in being direct. "Who sent you?"

The sneer turns into a scowl. "Hmph. So...you already know about the mafia."

Tsuna's eyes snap open.

"Wait, _what_?"

 

 


	4. The Introduction Of A Gang Leader

"Tch. I should have known. Some spoiled kid figures he's got some influence, so he can get away with anything," Hayato growls menacingly.

Tsuna blinks. " _What_?"

"I bet you thought your dad could scoop you out of any trouble you got into, huh? Well tough shit! A life of crime is a hell of a lot more complicated than that! If you know where you stand, then you better know that I'm here to whip your ass back into shape! I don't have time for self-righteous brats! The mafia would never have time for worms like you!"

There's a long silence where Hayato stands seething over Tsuna, and Tsuna sits on the bed, staring blankly up at Hayato.

"... _What_?"

A little of Hayato's bravado seeps out of him, which is saddening, because he almost looked cool and assertive for a second. The fluster is quickly returning in its wake, though. "W-whaddya mean, 'what'? You heard me! I'm whipping you...I mean, I'm your tutor, so I'm responsible over you, and stuff..."

"When did the mafia come into this?" Tsuna asks, more exasperated than confused now. "Why would the mafia want someone to watch me?"

"Well...Uh..." Hayato has completely lost his wind now. "It's not the mafia, I mean...your dad told me to..."

"But isn't my dad in the mafia?"

"What? Of course not! He's just...no, wait, I'm getting off topic here! Your dad told me that I was the best person in all of Italy to get his son back on the right track! I mean, we're the same age, have Japanese heritage, I'm way smarter than you, and I've actually lived on the streets, so I know what kind of bad shit you're getting into—"

_Ah. Aahhhh geez._

"I'm not getting into anything," Tsuna mumbles, shrinking back on the bed. His cheeks feel hot, and it's suddenly very hard to look Hayato in the eye. "...I just wanted to get a...a reaction..."

"So you're just going around- uh...huh?" Tsuna can't see his face, but the confusion in his voice makes him sink even further towards the comforter he's sitting on.

"...I was mad that he never talked much with us...and was never home, so..." He pulls his legs up so he can hide his mouth with his knees. "...so I might have said something a little extreme to get a rise out him."

"You..."

Silence.

Hands suddenly twist into Tsuna's collar, and he's yanked up into the air, where Hayato can glare at him good and close. "You mean I came all the way over here from overseas, passing up dozens of job opportunities, for a  _practical joke_?"

"I-it wasn't a joke!" Tsuna says, his entire face on fire now. "I just told him what was going on! It just...might have sounded more dangerous when I said it..."

Hayato seems to be choking on something, and Tsuna thinks he may actually punch him right then and there. But he's too upset for even that — with a trembling sigh, he falls back onto the carpet and stares at the ceiling as if it could tell him the secrets of the universe. Tsuna is too embarrassed to look any farther than his feet.

"I just wanted to prove myself," Hayato mumbles, almost to himself. "If I could earn the confidence of someone like that, then..."

"....'Earn the confidence'?" Tsuna asks.

Hayato clucks his tongue in annoyance. "It doesn't matter now. I'm stuck here for _no damn reason_  thanks to you. Do you know how much info they gave me for this? I can’t just _ditch_ now."

"Sorry. I didn't think—" No, that isn't quite right, is it? He  _did_  think. He thought long and hard about it, and made a decision, because..."If he had reacted at all, I would have said something. He didn't let me explain, he just acted like there wasn't a problem..."

This must be why his instincts were telling him that talking wasn't going to work, back with the ramen. Because they'd just mumble awkwardly and not get anywhere with the discussion in the meantime. It's working even less now, because Tsuna is being overtaken by his own spite for his dad again. Even if his dad had actually made some sort of precaution against Tsuna's false descent into evil, this is the sort of thing you're supposed to talk out with your kid.

Tsuna fiddles with the fabric of his comforter. This is such a mess. He just wanted to be a little mean to his dad for once, and now Hayato's been led by the nose and Tsuna is responsible for him and he's probably going to get denied his tuition out of some petty revenge because Hayato is an angry person and-

-And Tsuna needs that tuition. His grades  _suck_.

His feelings smooth out again. Okay, all being emotional got him was a stilted fight in his bedroom with someone who may or may not be a member of the mafia. Obviously, that doesn't work, and he should never do it again. Next up: blatantly appealing to one's better nature. All Tsuna knows about Hayato is that he's really smart, really violent, and carries dynamite around in his pockets. So what is his better nature?

Tsuna closes his eyes. The answer is obvious. Probably a really ridiculous thing to do, and might get him killed, but obvious.

"Never mind, then," Tsuna says, abruptly standing. "I'm going to go put myself in mortal peril. Bye."

"W-WHAT!?" Hayato yells before Tsuna even makes it out the door.

"Was I not clear? I'm clearly going to get myself into mortal danger. It's nice for you, isn't it?" Tsuna turns to look over his shoulder. "I'm sure saving me from such a perilous situation would definitely earn the confidence of my father and anyone else who might be concerned, right?"

Hayato splutters. Tsuna isn't sure if that's a good thing. Probably a good thing?

He continues downstairs, where his mother is preparing dinner. She glances up at him with a cheerful smile. "How are you getting along, Tsu-kun? Everything okay?"

"Pretty good. We're going to go somewhere for a little bit, to get to know each other." Tsuna glances around the room, and picks up a sweater off the back of the couch. It'll probably be getting dark by the time they get back, and he has no tolerance for cold. He slips it over his head and gives the hesitantly trailing Hayato a placid smile. "Let's go."

"Are you really going out? In that?"

Tsuna glances down at himself. Specifically, the pastel wool sweater with a picture of a kitten in soft pinks and purples proudly spread across the front, surrounded by blue and yellow flowers. It goes nicely with his school uniform pants, and fits well enough that he can easily slide his gakuran over it. It used to be massive on him when his mother first bought it for him when he was like, five, but now it fits fine, and has the worn coziness of old, well-used clothes. "Is there something wrong with what I'm wearing?"

Hayato looks at him. Then the sweater.

"...Let's just go," he grumbles.

It's only mid-afternoon, so Tsuna feels safe circling around into the downtown area before he goes about executing his plan. He sorts through his device, trying to organize the information he has, and comes up with a simple list.

_Point 1: Namimori West High School students were under orders of third year student of Koyama Middle by the name of Udo. Udo was strong enough to control high school students. This is terrifying._

_Point 2: Kusakabe used Tsuna's information to quickly 'dispose' of Udo, probably. Kusakabe said the situation was taken care of, so Tsuna is guessing that's what happened. This leaves a power vacuum._

_Point 3: Regardless of what the Namimori middle school Disciplinary Committee does to them, they might still be determined to fight back, and also to exact revenge on the person (or people) responsible for taking out the leader. Namely, Tsuna and Hana._

_Point 4: Tsukkomi types are really easy to talk to._

This last point is why he's making a detour into a 100 yen shop. While Hana isn't an inherently angry person, she has a quick tongue and a life mission to incite a reaction out of Tsuna, which means she is  _mortally offended_  by anything silly he says or does with a straight face. If Tsuna replies to the comment with banter, they usually have an entire semi-friendly conversation without issue.

Imagine if he could wield this immense power to affect Hayato, who yells at  _everything._

Feeling pleased now, Tsuna picks out a certain headband while Hayato glares at him through the glass from outside. Tsuna makes sure to hide the object with his body as he pays. Hana usually has a stronger reaction if she's surprised — maybe Hayato is the same way.

His business done, he slides behind a rack of reading glasses, slips on the headband, and casually strolls back outside. Hayato's eyes are wide, and his face, which was about to snarl, is stuck in a horrible grimace of surprise, confusion, and forgotten words.

Tsuna adjusts his newly bought cat ears, holds his hands up to imitate paws, and says with absolutely no intonation at all, " _nyaaa_."

"DON'T SCREW AROUND WITH ME!" Hayato bellows, slapping Tsuna's head down hard enough to knock the ears straight off his head.

Tsuna rolls with the motion and swings his body back up again, eyes alight with awe at the gravity of Hayato's response. " _A super pure Tsukkomi!?_ "

_**SMACK.** _

"What the hell are you talking about!? If you're just going to goof off, I'm going back!"

Tsuna rubs his head gingerly and picks up the cat ear headband. A double-hit. Hayato is truly an _ultra_  pure Tsukkomi. Very carefully, he reapplies the headband, making sure to tidy his hair so it sits properly. "Sorry. I just wanted to check something. It really suits the sweater, though, doesn't it?"

Glare.

"Okay, okay, I'm going, for real this time."

He starts walking down the street, and Hayato thankfully follows, grumbling about 'stupid kids' and 'cat freaks'. Tsuna really overshot with that one. Maybe Hana actually likes him more than she lets on? Or maybe Hayato hates him way more than initially expected. He doesn't really have enough experience with people to tell what the average bullshit tolerance level is — he had befriended Kyouko and then decided human beings were no longer a huge necessity in his life immediately afterwards. Humans are terrible. Usually to him. Exclusively.

As they make their way to Koyama Middle, Tsuna wonders why it's always so hard to deal with people. Maybe he's cursed.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Koyama Middle is just as disgusting and uncharacteristically full of students as last time. Hayato, who was previously glaring at the back of Tsuna's head and looking ready to bomb him into oblivion, is now glancing wildly around the grounds, looking ready to bomb  _Koyama_ into oblivion. It's probably an improvement.

"Just checking, that's real dynamite you have there, right?" Tsuna says lightly.

"Of course it is!"

"And you know how to use it? Without hurting yourself."

Hesitation. "Yeah."

"Okay, nice." Tsuna marches right on up through the school, to where he remembered Udo's haunt to be. Delinquents try to cross his path, but they usually take one look behind him, pale, and quickly cling to the wall. Tsuna spares a glance to look at Hayato and has to fight down the urge to flinch. The new hostile environment seems to have activated some latent delinquent punk gene in Hayato, and now he's glaring left and right with an absolutely  _artful_ leer, his posture so aggressive and lounging that he could pass as some gutter thug even with the suit and carefully smoothed hair. Even Disciplinary Committee members don't have this level of vicious swagger.

Tsuna recalls Hayato mentioning that he was a good candidate for putting Tsuna on the right path because he 'knows the street life', or something…is this what he meant?

They make it to the classroom. Tsuna opens the door and tries very hard to not look terrified at the faces of the pissed-off delinquents inside. "Anyone replaced Udo yet?"

"You're that little shit that came with the Committee girl!" One of them shouts. Tsuna steps further into the classroom, revealing his armband, and the teen baulks. "No way... _you're_ a Committee goon? A shrimp like you?"

"A mere piece of trash doesn't have the right to call me a shrimp," Tsuna replies sharply. Constantly talking with Kyouko and Hana has been great practice for quick replies, and he's grateful for it now. He loosens his posture so it's less obvious that he's trembling. "Answer the question."

"I'm not gonna get talked down to by some little shi—"

Tsuna jumps to the side when the delinquent approaches, and in his place walks Hayato, wielding a piece of dynamite in each of the spaces between his fingers. Clenched in his teeth is an abused-looking cigarette, and his glasses are drooping slightly on his nose. Rather than ruining the effect, it makes him look even  _more_  wild. "I'm responsible for this kid. You want him, you go through me."

Very slowly, Tsuna removes the cigarette from Hayato’s mouth and gives him a very disappointed look. His mom had already expressed her opinion on that.

Hayato, glaring furiously at Tsuna, takes another cigarette out of his pack, lights it pointedly, and uses it to light every single dynamite stick between his fingers.

Oh. _Huh._ Tsuna puts his hands up apologetically and takes a step back to let him do his work.

The next few minutes are a blur. Most of it is full of explosions, and after a few come too close, he starts getting dizzy and dry heaves in the corner. One asshole went to strike him while he was still crouched down, but Tsuna's instincts decided that it was a great idea to suddenly jump up and give the guy a face-full of shoulderblades. Then he fell down on top of the guy and just sort of laid there for a while.

Some things might have happened before, during, and after, but the ceiling and dull throb in his inner ear is currently more interesting than remembering the specifics.

The explosions eventually stop, and Tsuna finally sits up to search for Hayato. His tutor is punching someone holding a _steel pipe_. Tsuna frowns at this. Udo had a lot of guts to encourage his lackeys to be this violent when there's someone like Hibari living in Namimori. Then again, how else would you convince high school students to follow you? That guy wasn't exactly a king of manipulation.

Another delinquent runs at Hayato. He has to circle around a wrecked stack of desks to do it though, which also means he also has to pass Tsuna. Naturally, Tsuna punches him in the ankle and relishes the  _thunk-fsshh_  as the teenager skids over the ground. Haha, he's helping.

Hayato stomps over to the scene and drives the heel of his sneaker into the delinquent's head, forcing the unfortunate Koyama student to kiss tile. Standing over Tsuna, he levels a glare that could wilt an entire garden with just one sweep. "What's the meaning of this?"

"Congratulations on saving my poor, foolish life. You should probably keep this sort of thing from happening again," Tsuna says innocently.

"You _meant_  to get yourself in trouble,  _and_  you dragged me here! Give me a clear answer, you shitty cat freak!"

The teen underneath Tsuna groans. Tsuna is probably tiny enough to throw off with the minimum amount of effort, so he makes sure to punch him in the neck to keep him down. "You should probably keep this thing from happening again, so it only makes sense for you take control, right?"

"Take control?" Hayato repeats uncertainly.

"I'm not involved in any criminal activity, or gang fights, or whatever you think I should be up to, but I'm still hanging with a gang that gets rough with delinquents," Tsuna explains carefully. "I put myself at risk here twice now, and there's probably  _someone_  who wants my blood. If you're really some dynamite-tossing hotshot with mafia know-how and experience with life on the streets, it should be easy to whip these guys into shape, right?"

Hayato pauses.

Blinks.

Brightens with understanding.

"You want me to take over the school?" Hayato asks with way too much enthusiasm. "The _whole_  school?"

Tsuna shrugs. "I was thinking the leftovers the last boss left behind, but uh...go for it, I guess. It'd be good on your organized crime resumé. Or whatever the equivalent is."

Hayato quickly smooths down his hair and pushes up his glasses. Tsuna is amazed to see that he's actually happy- no, _ecstatic._  Tsuna had 100% expected this to work, but not  _this_  well. Maybe he just meshes better with delinquents? Why does he mesh better with delinquents? That's a horrible skill to have.

"So, what, what should I do? Beat them down?"

"Well, it's a replacement for me, and I'm not actually a troublemaker, so...do what an overbearing parent would want you to do? Clean up? Have manners? Good grades? Do something with their lives?"

"I could tutor  _all of them_ ," says Hayato, who is now clearly drunk with power.

"Yeah, I guess, if you want? But you're my tutor right now, aren't you?"

Hayato snaps to attention and drags Tsuna to his feet. "I'm sorry, Tsunayoshi-san, I underestimated you! This is also your way of helping me, right?"

"Uh- well- yeah, pretty much, but—"

"I understand! I'll be the best tutor Namimori has ever seen, and control these bastards with an iron fist! I'll tell your father all about your kindness!"

"Lie to him," Tsuna says quickly.

"I'll lie completely!" Hayato immediately agrees.

Tsuna jerks back, unsettled at Hayato's abrupt change in demeanor. His warning bells aren't ringing yet, but experience has taught him that people being nice for no reason are evil and only want to see his suffering. Unless they're Kyouko. "I- just tell him that I'm surly and disagreeable, don't spin some great epic about my misdeeds. I just want him to—" _to come home_  "—to sweat a little."

"I see...You're also trying to get the attention of someone you respect," Hayato nods seriously. "I should have considered that. I was just so wrapped up in a kid my age with a silver spoon in his mouth—"

"I don't know anything about the mafia either," Tsuna quickly reassures him. "I only know that my dad is associated with it, and I guess he's not even part of it, based on what you're telling me. I'm only doing low-key jobs at the Committee, right now."

"So I misread every part of the situation...Even when you were helping me with food, out of the kindness of your heart..." Hayato bows his head, face pinched in shame and guilt. Then he pops right back up again with glittering eyes. "Don't worry, I'll tutor you to become the best boss ever, Boss!"

_What._

"What?"

"I'll teach you a few things about the mafia too. You never know when someone's gonna come for your head. Do you carry a firearm with you at all times?"

_"What?"_

"I'll take you to the shooting range after school, Boss! A leader needs to know how to defend himself!"

"When did I—"

Hayato slaps him roughly on the back, knocking Tsuna over and reminding him of the pains of breaktime with the Committee members. "Don't worry, I'll take good care of this school for you, you just focus on taking over that Committee, alright?" He gives Tsuna an exaggerated wink.

Oh, he’s being wildly misinterpreted. That’s easier to understand. Sort of.

He gives him a placid smile. "Yep. Will do."

Hayato perks up. "Right! You said the workbook I made up was totally wrong for your grade level, right? I'll go fix it right away! A leader such as yourself needs to understand what he's doing both in the classroom and out, right?"

Tsuna doesn't even want to know where the hell Hayato is getting his whole 'Boss Leader' theory from, for example, but since the alternative is getting yelled at, he just continues smiling serenely and nodding.

Hayato takes off with such vigour that Tsuna can hear his steps from the staircase down the hall. Even when his footsteps are out of earshot, he can hear Hayato yelling about how he's the new boss around here, followed by a series of explosions. Damn. What a guy. If Hana or Kyouko were here, they'd rail into him for attracting such dangerous people.

Maybe he should stop making friends with delinquents. That could be a nice and good idea.

Speaking of delinquents, the ones Hayato had beaten on are coming back to themselves again. Tsuna steps over the one he had taken down and pauses in the doorway, looking over Hayato's handiwork. To be honest, if Tsuna had to pick someone to take over, only Hayato and Hibari come to mind. Anyone else just wouldn't do the job. It's even better now that he has someone that (randomly) likes him doing it. Hibari is too terrifying to celebrate.

Maybe he should make friends with _more_  delinquents. Maybe he should become a delinquent. A law-enforcing delinquent. That also sounds nice and good.

"Y-you..." A teen with cracked, pointy shades and poorly dyed dirty blond hair now stained with blood grunts.

Tsuna's smile droops as more Koyama students get up and look up at him. He hopes Hayato cleans these guys up soon. Some of them may actually want him dead now.

"Who the hell  _are_  you!?"

Tsuna cocks his head, gently holds his hands up into paws, and with a small pawing motion and an incredibly realistic cat voice, says " _mroowwwrrr_."

Confused silence. Shades guy grunts a little, but words don't come out of his gaping mouth.

Tsuna turns on his heel and leaves, now feeling a little drunk with power himself.

  
  


* * *

 

 

That day ends with a text to Kusakabe about Koyama being resolved top-to-bottom and his mother complimenting him on his cute little accessory. So, pretty well. Hayato gets his own bedroom, which is currently just a bag on the floor and a single bed, but Tsuna's mom assures Hayato that there'll be plenty of time to fill it up over his stay in their house. Hayato starts crying. It's really awkward.

The next morning Hayato promises to create a good, solid beginner's curriculum that even an elementary student could understand by the end of the afternoon, and Tsuna's mom is thrilled that they're such good friends now. She doesn't seem to notice how Hayato keeps calling him 'Boss'. Seeing as Tsuna doesn't know where the hell he even got the idea that Tsuna has that sort of ambition to begin with, he's thankful for her obliviousness.

The black eye wasn't particularly bad, and Tsuna never bruises for long to begin with, so he peels off the bandage that morning and then spends the remainder of his morning routine quietly exasperated that neither Hayato nor his mother notice this.

They part ways out the door — Hayato to go enroll in Koyama and Tsuna to take his usual route to Namimori Middle. Hayato waves enthusiastically and promises to make the school as strong and just as Tsuna's dream, or whatever. Tsuna wonders if this has something to do with the ramen. Was it because of the ramen? Will he keep befriending delinquents if he goes around asking people to mug him?

This thought plagues him until he reaches school, at which point he's plagued by pointed stares and unsure looks. He ignores them all and proceeds into the school with his usual slouch. When he reaches the Committee room, he adjusts his jacket a bit and raises his head a little higher. Then he opens the door.

Kusakabe is the first to notice him. "Hey, shrimp. You mind if you-"

Tsuna can actually  _hear_  everyone looking at him at roughly the same time. He refuses to shrink back or tremble. "Yes, Kusakabe-san?"

"...Good job on whatever the hell you did to get the Koyama brats to shut up," Kusakabe starts again. "The chairman finally had enough time to go on patrol. He's in a good mood."

"You're welcome," Tsuna says.

"You've got a solid head on your shoulders, but we need men who can keep up," Kusakabe continues, even though his eyes keep flicking to the top of Tsuna's head. "You're fine with bringing some paperwork up to the reception room, right?"

"Sure. What's in the reception room?"

The entire room stops staring at a point above Tsuna's brow to give him a funny look. Kusakabe outright frowns. "It's the chairman's office."

"Hibari-san's? Really? But I thought..." He pauses to look at the amount of people lingering in the room. It's only about half the committee, but it's still some obvious crowding. There is no way Hibari would willingly set up shop in a place with more than four people in a group. "...Nevermind."

He's not going to ask how Hibari managed to nab two school rooms for his Committee. Some questions are better left unanswered.

Then, finally, Kusakabe's words sink in.  _Hibari's office_. Tsuna feels a cold shiver run up his spine, reminding him of the gravity of what he's about to do, but he suppresses it and tries his best to pretend that nothing is different and he's brave and strong not about to scream or soil himself. Besides, Kusakabe just said that Hibari is in a good mood. Tsuna probably won't die from this.

He drops his bag on his desk and takes the papers from Kusakabe, who is now blatantly staring at Tsuna's hair. Tsuna ignores this and leaves. He wants to relax before classes, and the only way to relax around Hibari is to spend _as little time as possible_  around him. Especially now.

The reception room is a little out of the way, and the amount of walking Tsuna has to do to get there means he gets the maximum amount of staring. He ignores this too. He can't afford to break his concentration. In, deliver paperwork, out. He passes by his own classroom on the way there, where Hana is standing by the open window. She takes one look at him and slams her forehead into her open palm, looking like Tsuna's existence physically pains her. Kyouko is nowhere to be seen, but he can talk with her later.

When he reaches his destination, he gently balances the papers on a single lifted leg to readjust his uniform and single accessory. Then he rights himself and knocks gently on the door. The moment he shows any sign of uncertainty, he's dead. He can't stop after walking to school like this. He can't stop after walking into the Committee like this. He's a strong, manipulative delinquent, technically speaking. He can manipulate his way out of becoming a red smear on the wall if he just  _believes_  in himself.

"Come in."

Tsuna carefully opens the door and peeks inside. Hibari is working on paperwork, as expected, backlit by the light of the window. Tsuna wonders why Hibari is always backlit by something every time he sees him. Like the universe is orchestrating a dramatic setting for Hibari's dramatic nature.

He's also smiling, which is uncommon. It feels weird to acknowledge that Hibari does normal things like smile when he's in a good mood; Tsuna may or may not have succumbed to the rumour that Hibari only smiles when he has scented blood and is ready to chew his prey into a bloody pulp. But there's no tenseness in Hibari's shoulders, no sign he's about to chuck a tonfa at Tsuna's head.

He's just happily doing paperwork.

"What is it," Hibari says after Tsuna spends too long gawking. Tsuna automatically steps forward to give Hibari the documents Kusakabe wanted delivered, and Hibari finally looks up at the movement.

And he  _freezes._

Hibari was sitting perfectly still before, but now he's like a statue, almost photographic in his lack of movement. Tsuna had no idea a human being could be that motionless. He's not even breathing. Tsuna doesn't feel any more bloodlust than usual yet, but he doesn't take another step forward, just to be safe.

Very, very deliberately, Hibari narrows his eyes. He's still smiling, and the resulting expression is quite possibly the scariest thing Tsuna has ever seen in his entire life.

"What is that."

"What's what?" Tsuna asks, like a suicidal person.

"On your head." Hibari is getting up. Tsuna feels every psychological barrier in his head crumbling to dust, leaving only a thick cloud of terror that Hibari can most definitely smell.

Most of Tsuna's coping mechanisms are all about numbness, so fear-numbness isn't a huge difference. He ignores his self-preservation instincts and walks all the way to the desk to place down the documents gently down on a clear area. Hibari doesn't even look at them. "It's allowed in the school rules," Tsuna elaborates, continuing to make eye contact, like a suicidal person.

The quiet of the room is deafening, a crushing pressure, and Tsuna can  _taste_  the way Hibari's bloodlust climbs. He can feel that odd tense feeling in his chest again, the one that tells him that in the next ten seconds he needs to take exactly three steps back.

"Secretary."

Tsuna jumps back three paces and whips his hands up to either side of his head, securing the soft felt of his cat ear headband in place. The sudden movement causes Hibari to whip out his tonfas and knock his chair back in preparation to pounce, but he doesn't leave his spot behind the desk, and the lack of pouncing means Tsuna prematurely aborts his attempt to dodge, making him jerkily wobble in place. Hibari's mouth is still fixed with a smile, but his eyes skim over Tsuna lazily. It is only marginally less creepy than the narrowed look.

"What are you doing?"

"I, uh, got the feeling you wanted to take them off," says Tsuna.

"What are they."

"It's a character item. It makes me more interesting," Tsuna says weakly. There's no way he's going to tell Hibari 'I'll bite herbivores to death' Kyouya that he was giving the Tsukkomi-conversation theory enough merit to wear something zany to school in order to get more people to talk to him. That's the kind of pathetic Hibari beats down on principle.

Hibari inclines his head minutely.

The only other warning Tsuna gets is the tenseness in his chest and the slight tightening of Hibari's hands on his tonfas. Then suddenly he's stumbling back to avoid the flashes of silver aimed at his skull, rotating his entire body to avoid them, ducking and sliding out of the way of each Hibari's gunshot-quick strikes trying very hard to keep his face blank and his screams internal. The room is dead silent except for the flapping of fabric, scuff of shoes, and singing of metal through the air.

Hibari's presence has an immense gravity to it that makes it simple to follow his movements, but Tsuna is slow and terrified and still has his hands firmly pressed against the headband. He wants to take them down, seeing as he can only last on footwork for so long, but his instincts are telling him that the only reason Hibari is attacking him is because he felt like trying to get the cat ears off his head, and allowing him to do that would be a loss.

Should he intentionally lose?

Tsuna feels cold sweat trickle down the back of his neck when he sees Hibari's lips part and his eyes widen in interest.

 _No he should not_.

He backs into the couch and trips onto it, giving Hibari an opening to bring his tonfa down, but Tsuna rolls out of the way and jumps back towards the desk. Hibari moves  _unimaginably_ fast, giving Tsuna no time to think of his next movements, and it's all Tsuna can do to swing out of the way of the next strike and jump backwards onto the coffee table. Hibari joins him on his perch, and they exchange a wild, barely lucid burst of attacks on Hibari's side and dodges on Tsuna's. Tsuna is loosening up now, more wild than stiff with fear, and he has more freedom to tilt his body, duck, leap, sidestep and bow away from each attack.

Tsuna takes a few more quick backsteps, onto the carpeted flooring. He doesn't give Hibari the chance to follow this time - with one immense leap, he propels himself backwards into the hall.

And Hibari doesn't follow.

 _"Safe!"_  Tsuna half-shrieks, finally removing his hands from his head. Hibari's eyes trace the movement, follow how Tsuna's hands adjust his uniform, comb his hair, clutch at his thighs as he gasps for breath.

Hibari's eyes flick back up to the cat ears. Tsuna immediately brings his hands back up to hold the headband down and gets ready to run.

After what seems like centuries, Hibari turns and relaxes his posture. "Pass."

"Huh?" Tsuna definitely does not squeak.

Hibari doesn't answer though. He simply walks back up to his desk, slides into his seat, and starts looking at the papers Tsuna delivered. Tsuna waits for Hibari to tell him to meet him after school, or that he will be beaten to death for trampling on the furniture, or anything that sounds even remotely like a threat, but he just peacefully does his paperwork like he didn't just chase Tsuna around the room for a full minute.

Tsuna turns to leave.

"Secretary."

Tsuna goes still.

"Wear those tomorrow."

Tsuna nods.

Silence.

Tsuna flees.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Tsuna makes it into class just before it starts, so he's struck with the excellent luck of being able to wear his cat ears with absolutely no one being able to comment on them. The entire class is spent having people openly gape at him. Kyouko has a giddy expression on her face, like she thinks Tsuna is really more adorable than weird. A few students are even snickering.

The moment the bell rings, Hana whirls in her seat and fixes Tsuna with a deadly glare. After Hayato and Hibari, it's like looking at a puppy. "What the  _hell_  are you wearing!?"

"It's so cuuuute!" Kyouko gets up to pet the ears and muss his hair. Tsuna has a standing policy of only brushing his hair after showering, so his hair is usually course, greasy to the point it feels like it’s made of wax, and full of knots at any given time, styled by the whims of his bed. He has no doubt the ears are far more pleasant to touch than his hair, but she still gives his head a few pets.

"It's a character item," Tsuna explains easily. He had practiced this explanation, though he can't sell it to any Committee members. "I've been trying to spend my middle school days fading into obscurity, but people still call me Dame-Tsuna anyway. I figured rather than hiding, I should have a loud appearance."

"What's the point of having a loud appearance if you're still slouching like a creep?" Hana snorts.

"I'll correct my posture, then. It's fine, isn't it?" Tsuna leans on his hand and retains a blank expression. Hana throws her hands up in the air and goes to talk to her  _normal_  friends.

Kyouko continues to laugh. "I think it's a great idea! I mean, you're no ordinary guy, you know? People just don't know it yet!"

"Thanks."

"And, um...hey..." Kyouko leans in close. "Where'd you get them? They're really cute and all..."

"The 100 yen shop at the intersection downtown." Tsuna hesitates. Imagines Kyouko, a popular and socially sucessful girl, wearing cat ears, pawing and meowing like a cat, in front of actual people, who could see her. He closes his eyes and thanks his mind for reminding him of the terrible possibilities. "...You shouldn't wear that sort of thing in public, though."

Kyouko blinks. "Eh? Why's that?"

"Kyouko...Even if we’re friends, you don’t need to reduce yourself to my level," Tsuna grimly replies.

"Hahaha! You really  _are_  interesting!" Both of them look up to see...

Tsuna's chin slips down from his hand.  _Yamamoto Takeshi_? Charmingly handsome school idol, baseball star, tallest guy in the class? He is so tall. He's like a giant, towering over Tsuna's desk and laughing, for some reason. He has to be at  _least_  six feet. Kyouko smiles at him, seemingly oblivious to his immense presence. He’s _so big._

"Hi, Yamamoto-kun! Are you doing well?"

"Oh, yeah! I think I might be under-performing a bit, so I've been practicing way more often!" Yamamoto laughs. Tsuna looks wildly between them. Since when were they friends? He's never seen Kyouko exchange more than greetings and well-wishings with Yamamoto before!

It couldn't be... _you're allowed to talk freely with anyone you like when you're popular?_

"Hahaha! He's got an interesting expression now too!"

"Tsuna always keeps his thoughts to himself, you never know what he's thinking! I guess in that way he’s always interesting?"

"You never know what a lot of people are thinking," Tsuna says jerkily, heart still shaken from rediscovering the emotion of Jealousy.

"Yeah, but with you, it's like an air of mysticism, y’know? Sometimes you even run off without saying anything, and come back with a stuffed animal, or something..." Kyouko ponders. Tsuna avoids eye contact. That was because he had forgotten Kyouko's birthday.

"Wow, I had no idea you were that mysterious!" Yamamoto laughs. Tsuna twitches. He has no idea why, but the way Yamamoto talks grates against his ears. Kyouko is just as chipper and all-accepting, and even his mom has that light, washed-out happiness that feels the way a sun-bleached photo looks. Bright, weathered, and unrelenting, tearing away the dark colours of his heart. Why is it okay when Kyouko and his mother does it, but when Yamamoto addresses him, he feels empty and slimy? Could it be...

_...He actually hates men?_

"You look like you're making all sorts of discoveries today, Tsuna!" Kyouko says curiously.

Tsuna quickly drops the expression of panicked realization, falling back on his ever-blank resting face. "Today is a journey of great self-discovery. I feel like a changed man."

Laughter again. Tsuna is overwhelmed with the strange and visceral urge to kick Yamamoto in the shins. The fact he hates men is totally understandable, if he just spent five seconds thinking about his life up until this point, but he doesn’t consider himself prone to violence.

"Is it because you joined the Committee? How'd that happen, anyway?"

"Kyouko asked them to let me join. She was worried I'd fade from this earth and become a ghost..." Tsuna says softly, causing Kyouko to pout and tug him by the ears like a disobedient child.

"People like to make fun of Tsuna, but he has a lot of good points! He just needed a different environment to flourish in!" Kyouko tells Yamamoto decisively.

There's a moment of pause. Yamamoto tilts his head curiously. "Good points?"

Tsuna kicks Yamamoto in the shins.

  
  


* * *

 

 

After the last classes let out, Tsuna is curious to note that the Disciplinary Committee room is entirely empty, except for Kusakabe, who looks like he's just about to leave.

"Did something come up?" Tsuna asks.

Kusakabe glances up to him, and to his credit, doesn't look at the ears this time. "Not really. The students from West High aren't reacting well to having their boss taken out and the whole of Koyama blocked off, and are trying to cause trouble with Namimiddle. Everyone's just keeping the peace."

"The whole of Koyama?"  _Damn_  Hayato works fast. He just set out only this morning.

Kusakabe's lips twitch. "Apparently every time someone from West High tries to enter, they get bombed. Koyama students claim they're just 'condensed fireworks'. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"Nothing you need to worry about.”

"Well, the West High students aren't working out of the high school like the middle schoolers were, so the Chairman is free to raise hell to clear them out. Could you go with him?"

Tsuna pauses in the middle of leaving the room. He can  _feel_  the blood drain from his face. "With...Hibari-san?"

"He always goes off by himself and doesn't tell us what happened until the next day," Kusakabe explains.

"But...But...why do I have to go with Hibari-san, though?" Tsuna asks. What happened to his calm, unremarkable life, where his soul was empty and the most mortal danger he ever got in was with a dog?

"Well, you're quiet, too small to count as 'crowding', and definitely a shrimp," Kusakabe says. "The boys like you, but people are going to think it's okay to mess with the Disciplinary Committee if they can mess with you."

"So that means..."

"If you're seen in the Chairman's company for longer than ten minutes without getting bitten, you'll be proving yourself. It's easy, right? Just do what you normally do. He didn't bite you when you went to the reception room, right?"

Tsuna raises a hand idly to the cat ear headband. "No." It was  _worse_.

"Well, better get going before you lose him!" Kusakabe knocks him over with an enormous pat on the back that sends Tsuna flying out the door. He barely manages to land on his feet.

Right. So he just has to spend some time with Hibari. And live.

He trudges through the school grounds in a hazy, terrified autopilot. At one point, Mochida shoves past him, red-faced and teary-eyed. Tsuna is too immersed in his own horror to even consider why. He rarely spends mental energy thinking about Mochida.

He stops at the gates when he sees Hibari leaning against the wall and glancing down the street. When Hibari turns to look at him, his smile is so foreboding that Tsuna can hear dramatic latin chanting echoing in his head. His knees almost give out, but the underlying threat of  _bite herbivores to death_  keep him standing.

Hibari turns.

"Let's go."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Culture Notes:**  
>  _Boss_ \- This doesn't translate at ALL so I'll just tell you the Japanese language quirk I used in my English-language fanfic. When Tsuna talks about Hibari, he uses the word 'taishou', which is a word you use to refer to a military commander. Gokudera, meanwhile, refers to Tsuna with the English loanword 'boss' (bosu/ボス), like Chrome does in canon. The Koyama delinquents refer to any given school leader with 'banchou', which is a word you use for delinquent gang leaders. I just use 'boss' for all three, but they have vastly different connotations, so here you go. I'm…not sure why I made this distinction.
> 
>  _Boke & Tsukkomi (Manzai Routine)_ \- The Manzai routine is a long-standing staple of Japanese humour, in which the Boke (fool) does something ridiculous or strange, and the Tsukkomi (straight man) chastises the Boke for their behaviour, usually with violence (most famously a paper fan). It's known for being very fast-paced. The Tsukkomi isn't always the one in power, the joke is simply that they feel the compulsive need to comment on the Boke's behaviour. For example, in canon, Reborn is a Boke, and Tsuna is a Tsukkomi. Fran is notably a Tsukkomi black hole - he is such an immense Boke that everyone in the immediate vicinity, regardless of their seriousness and self-control, HAS to Tsukkomi him. Even TYL Mukuro can't control himself. Fran is clearly the most powerful character in KHR.


	5. The Introduction Of A Fool

It’s very easy to read Hibari's moods once you spend a long time following him around, staring at him. In fact, you probably don't have to stare at him at all. Despite his immense killing intent and vicious nature, Hibari actually shows most of his emotions on his face, like a normal person. This is somehow surreal to Tsuna, even though he's been working under him for the past week.

Hibari was smirking when they left, indicating that he was pleased he was going to be able to beat up a bunch of people at once, hopefully in blessed silence. Then, as they moved through town, the smile fell from his face, and his brow furrowed, indicating he was agitated by the crowds and noises. As they went into the quieter areas of town, he started smirking again, but only a little uptick that rested naturally on his face.

It starts raining by the time they reach the dilapidated old apartment complex that seems to be where the remainder of the biker gang resides. Hibari's smile doesn't so much as flicker, so Tsuna can only guess that Hibari is immune to weather.

The door is locked, so Hibari just kicks it right off its hinges and marches on in. Tsuna delicately follows, carefully adjusting his cat ears in the process. Wouldn't do to march in on an enemy gang with his headband all out of place, and it's not like he can take it off — he gets the feeling that Hibari is going to spend this fight paying special interest to them. Special, _violent_ interest. Removing them would be only a concession of weakness.

They head straight down to the basement. Tsuna isn't sure if apartment buildings having basements is a normal thing, but Hibari strolls through the boiler room and down the metal staircase present inside like it's an everyday thing, so he just follows along in suit.

The staircase is well-lit, but full of winding turns, and it’s noisy to descend. Tsuna spares a look at Hibari, and...yep. Unhappy again. Fearing death, Tsuna quickly removes his shoes. The metal grating bites against his feet at first, but after a few steps, it feels pleasant, almost like a massage.

Hibari spares a glance at him. "What are you doing, Secretary?"

"It's too noisy," Tsuna says flatly.

Hibari inclines his head and smirks. Success! Tsuna isn't dying today!

They continue onward, and Tsuna notes that Hibari is a very delicate walker, barely making any noise at all on the steps. Tsuna switches the hand holding the shoes so he can walk a little closer to Hibari, determined to be able to see at least his profile at any given time. Hibari doesn't seem to care, and Tsuna finally understands what Kusakabe meant by his height preventing him from crowding — Hibari is slightly taller than the average teenage boy, and Tsuna is so pathetically tiny that it creates a safe, sustainable distance. Where Tsuna isn't dying.

Tsuna continues to stare at Hibari's face as they descend, preparing for Hibari to show some sign of discontent. Hibari's smirk remains, settled and cosy on his face. Unfortunately, as they continue down (and just how far down does this staircase go, anyway?), it falters for a moment, then falls entirely. Tsuna automatically halts his pace, and Hibari turns to look up at him.

"What is it?"

Tsuna twitches at the loudness of his voice after walking so long in silence. He…somehow hadn’t expected Hibari to notice all the staring. "Uh. It's nothing. Your smile..."

"Oh?" Hibari's smirk doesn't return, which is somehow even scarier. How does this guy manage to carefully orchestrate his responses to be as terrifying as possible?

"...Your smile is pretty refreshing," Tsuna finally continues after a moment of awkward anguish. "Makes me feel like I'm going to die."

Hibari doesn't say anything. He stares at Tsuna, and Tsuna stares at him, and Hibari is fingering his tonfas, and Tsuna is standing there like a jackass, arms limp and not wearing any shoes.

Then he turns on his heel and continues walking down again.

"Good."

Tsuna almost lets out a sigh of relief, but then the tenseness in his chest yanks desperately at him and he lets his knees give out just as Hibari twirls on his heel and lashes out at him with one of his tonfas. It comes as a complete surprise, so Tsuna is glad he has the presence of mind not to scream.

He's completely defenseless now, seeing as Hibari has planted a leg right next to his head to hold his balance on the staircase, and he has a tonfa pointed down at Tsuna's throat, ready to crush his windpipe. He is basically as good as dead. Apparently Hibari also notes that Tsuna is in no position for fun dodging sparring times, because he immediately pulls back and continues walking like he hadn't just attacked Tsuna for absolutely no reason.

He'd be lying if he said situations like this weren't worth the positive attention and sudden absence of insult-flinging from his classmates, but  _really_.

They reach the end of the staircase quickly after that, and Tsuna once again adjusts his headband to make sure he's composed for his first direct involvement in a gang fight. Well, Tsuna _is_  going to be lingering around the edges not getting involved, but it's the principle of the thing.

The stairs ended in a long hallway comprised of two doors on either side and ending with a single metal door, which Hibari kicks in without even pausing in his death march. Tsuna, wanting to feel useful but not in the mood for brawls, starts looking into the rooms when he hears the beginnings of a fight start. With a backing track of roughly five men, Tsuna checks the left-hand side — one locked, one is a junked lounge. On the right-hand side, another locked door, and then a...

A gun, pointed at his head.

Where are high school students getting  _illegal firearms_?

"So that Disciplinary Committee came to play, huh?" The teenager snorts, eyeing the armband on Tsuna's gakuran jacket. "Unless you're playing dress-up."

Tsuna blinks up at him. Compared to Hibari, this guy's threat feels basically meaningless. For some reason, he's absolutely positive that he's not going to shoot Tsuna in the head. "I operate a minor roll in the Committee, but that doesn't change the fact that the Committee owns Namimori, and you aren't playing nice. Do you have any idea how much time you’d be serving if the cops catch you with one of those?"

"Good thing no one’s here to catch me then," the teen growls. He is at least two heads taller than Tsuna with twice the muscles to support it, so Tsuna allows himself to be roughly grabbed and held with his back to the gang member's chest. Struggling would probably get him killed, even though that gun probably isn't even loaded.

The teen walks Tsuna down to the door Hibari went through, and Tsuna obediently moves in pace with his captor. They emerge into a massive open room, more like an underground carpark than a basement, filled with various obstacles that clearly didn't help the gang member's buddies, because most of them are on the floor unconscious with Hibari at the centre.

Hibari flicks his tonfas, sending out a spray of blood at his feet, and turns to look at the newcomers. Tsuna's ability to feel fear inexplicably shows up  _now_  of all times, making him seriously wonder if, much like Kyouko is his sense of happiness, Hibari Kyouya is his sense of terror.

"Perhaps I should bite you to death for getting caught," Hibari says to Tsuna.

"I thought you only bite herbivores?" Tsuna replies, just as coolly, assured in the warm protective arm currently attempting to choke him to death. It's between him and Hibari, and is thus a more than adequate comfort object. It may as well be a stuffed animal.

"Don't move or I blow the kid's brains out!" The teen yells at Hibari.

Hibari, of course, totally ignores him. If  _Tsuna_  could sense that he's not a threat, Hibari certainly can too. "Are you claiming that you aren't a herbivore?"

"I don't know, but does that analogy really make sense to begin with? Cats are carnivores, but they can be domesticated..." Tsuna makes a pawing motion with his fist to demonstrate. "But a herbivorous animal like a hippopotamus can kill a man in seconds. They do it all the time. Very territorial creatures, you know."

Hibari narrows his eyes. He's not smiling, so it's not as scary as it could be. "Are you calling yourself a hippo?"

"I don't know, Hibari-san, are _you_  calling  _me_  a hippo?" Tsuna replies, like a suicidal person.

"ENOUGH ABOUT THE HIPPOS!" The teenager roars, jabbing the gun painfully into Tsuna's skull. Suddenly, whatever had previously assured Tsuna of his own safety is absent, and he feels his his heart begin to beat against his chest. Oh right, threat of certain death. How could he possibly have forgotten. Or neglected to notice. Or just decided not to careabout. He thought he was being suicidal by backtalking to Hibari, but maybe he should have put a little more consideration into _the gun pointed at his head._

"Release the secretary," Hibari says to Tsuna's captor, sounding profoundly bored as he does so.

"No, you're going to drop your weapons, and then we're going to 'talk' about some things, if you get my meaning. You think that you can trample all over us just because you took down a middle-schooler?"

Hibari doesn't move. Tsuna glances at the gun aimed at his head — it's pressed too tightly to his temple to really consider trying to move. Even though the aftershock from firing one-handed at such an awkward angle would make his arm unusable for a moment (according to Hayato, who had been giving him tips through dinner)...well, Tsuna would still be dead, so what does that matter?

So Tsuna can only do something if the gun is away from his skull. He’s not sure if Hibari is even capable of leading someone on, but why not. Tsuna points at the ground, trying to make eye contact. Hibari doesn’t react. Frustrated, Tsuna focuses on Hibari’s tonfa and does it again, but mimes gripping a tonfa in his other hand. It’s a simple enough command.

Hibari quirks his head slightly, seeming to pick up on the request. He drops one tonfa, and the other dangles precariously from his fingertips. That’s…close enough.

The gun moves from Tsuna's head to accommodate the teen leaning forward in anticipation of the chairman of the Disciplinary Committee submitting to his whims, until Tsuna can clearly see that it isn’t aimed at him anymore.

Tsuna takes a deep breath.

" _NYROOOOOOOOOOOAWWWW,_ " Tsuna howls, in one of the best imitations of a scorned cat he has ever produced, even when ironically reproducing the noises his neighbour's cat makes out of spite. The teen flinches in surprise at the inexplicable noise, and the awkward angle and lack of anchor means that when he’s startled into shooting, it fires harmlessly into the ceiling, and the recoil makes him drop the gun.

In that tiny opening, Hibari tosses his remaining tonfa with the ferocity of Yamamoto Takeshi's ace pitches, and the piece of metal bites into the teenager's forehead, knocking him back entirely. The arm around Tsuna's neck tightens and brings him down too, and they topple over like a pair of dominoes.

And so, Tsuna finds himself, yet again, lying on top of a teenage school gang member at the site of a home base massacre. He wonders why he keeps getting into these sorts of situations. It is frankly kind of ridiculous. Why can't he be a normal, well-adjusted creepy loser, who doesn't get himself nearly killed every time he walks out the door? People call him Dame-Tsuna, for goodness sakes. He falls over nothing sometimes. He has noodle arms and the upper body strength of a five-year-old. He's not about this delinquency life.

"Get up," Hibari orders.

Tsuna gets up.

"You let him capture you," Hibari continues, looking over Tsuna pensively.

"He had a gun."

"You weren't afraid of the gun."

"I wouldn't be able to escape anyway."

"Why? You can dodge my attacks easily."

Tsuna shrugs. "Hibari-san is Hibari-san. It's different."

"How?" Hibari's blank expression has turned down into a frown, now. Tsuna swallows thickly and takes a step back.

"Well...you're something more, I guess? I feel like I have to dodge you. Your presence is...something else."

"Oh?" Hibari slowly lowers his head until he's looking up through the hairs of his fringe at Tsuna. Tsuna almost soils himself at the sight, but the tenseness in his chest is back with a vengeance. It fills him to the core, and he knows that Hibari isn't just going to strike.

He's aiming to chew Tsuna to bits.

The fear takes a screaming backseat and Tsuna fixes his posture, and that's all the incentive Hibari needs to attack. Without any physical warning, Hibari is at Tsuna's throat with streaks of blood-soaked silver metal, and as Tsuna is yanking his head back to narrowly avoid the strike, another tonfa is slicing at his side as he moves. In the process of still leaning back, Tsuna kicks off the ground and uses a mid-second floating in mid-air to let them pass above and below him. In that narrow opening as both tonfas complete their arc, he stretches his arms out to catch himself on the ground. The kickoff to bring him in the air wasn't enough to propel him into a full flip, so one hand compensates for the shift in weight while the other gives out entirely, sending him falling onto his side and away from Hibari.

It ends in a clumsy tumble, but he gets up quickly.

"Wao," says Hibari.

 _Shit_ , Tsuna doesn't say out loud.

Hibari goes for him again, this time with a diagonal strike. Tsuna dodges easily to the side, and swerves into a spinning sidestep as the second tonfa comes down towards his back. The spin gets him behind Hibari, and Tsuna doesn't hesitate to kick out at Hibari's exposed knees, but he misses the mark when Hibari's position shifts, leaving his foot in the precarious position of hovering between Hibari's twisting legs.

Hibari's legs are twisting because he's doing a full-bodied spin with both his tonfas prepared to jab Tsuna's eyes out. Tsuna shoves the endangered foot further in for balance and drops down into a crouch, narrowly dodging the weapons, but pushing his entire leg into the trap of Hibari's dancing feet. Hibari uses the leg to hook one of his feet in to anchor a spinning kick aimed directly at Tsuna's stomach in addition to the missed double tonfa strike.

Time goes in slow motion. Hibari's weight is perfectly balanced, with the tonfas, kicking leg, and hooked leg all at different positions. If Tsuna removes his leg and tries to jump forward, he'll get a swift kick to the nuts. If he tries to duck, he'll be powerless, like he was on the stairs. He isn't strong enough to propel himself forward in any direction.

He needs to stop thinking of Hibari as just an opposing force.

Tsuna whips his hands out, catches Hibari's leg, and digs his fingers in to keep it in place as he shoves it _up_. Hibari’s spinning kick flies directly over his head, and Tsuna’s foot drags out from the leg trap and circles behind him to support Tsuna shoving Hibari’s leg back into the ground. They’re side-by-side now, but Hibari’s tonfas are still moving, giving Tsuna barely enough time to kick off the ground and avoid Hibari switching legs and giving him a swift kick to the back of his skull with his heel.

Tsuna rolls, crawls to his knees, and skips back to his feet while avoiding the following quartet of tonfa strikes. Silver tongues of singing bloodlust snap at him, but he can stand properly now, doesn't do anything as risky as that kick, and thus retains an easy dance with Hibari, hit after hit failing to connect. Tsuna can faintly hear the sound of clanging metal in the distance, but it's nothing in comparison to the sound of his heart throbbing in his ears, the smell of metal in the basement, and the sensation of the dirt parting under his toes.

He's backed into a table, and Tsuna jumps back on top of it without thinking much of it. Hibari follows, but this time Tsuna's hands aren't glued to his skull, and he's free to get a little creative in his avoidance. In ducking from one strike, he grabs on the edge of the table and uses it as a far more stable anchor in a sweeping kick at Hibari's ankles. Hibari leaps to avoid it, disrupting the follow-up attack he was about to perform, and Tsuna does a somersault backwards onto the floor.

There's a hanging light over the table, and in walking over to the edge to prepare another slew of attacks, Hibari walks directly underneath it. The brilliant, almost blinding glow in the dim room brings stars and stinging pain to Tsuna's eyes, but he can't bring himself to look away. Hibari looks down on him like a great king of Babylon, Lucifer in flesh, and yet the tenseness and swarming cloak of murderous intent elevates him to the level of a god. Not in his power, not in his reputation, but in his grace. He smiles like he's always known joy, and joy has always been the fight.

Tsuna can hear the ominous latin chanting again.

  


* * *

 

 

By the time he awakes from his battle haze, there are twice as many unconscious people on the ground than before.

Tsuna blinks. He has to actually take a second to go back over the entire fight to recall that the metallic clanging sound was actually the sound of reinforcements running down the stairs, and said reinforcements had spent most of their time in the basement being used as especially mobile obstacles. Tsuna thinks he might have strangled one with a chain in order to use him as a meat shield, at one point.

He looks down at his hands. He's wearing knuckledusters. When the hell did he put on knuckledusters?

As for physical state, at the moment, he's panting heavily and covered in sweat. Hibari is faring much better, with only a faint slick to his brow and slightly more audible breathing. He's _grinning_ , and not even in a creepy way. After the constant flashes of intensity over the course of the fight, he looks more like he has a sparkle to his eye, known in normal middle-schoolers as 'joy'.

"Pass," Hibari says, confirming that the break in action was a conclusion.

Tsuna collapses into a heap on the ground, and finds himself, oddly enough, giggling. He had actually _enjoyed_  that. The entire time, the fear was only a dull hum, and what remained was electric motion and constant movement and him _not_  tripping over his own legs. In fact, he held on with a surprising amount of competency. He was... _good_.

He'd like that competency to extend to when some of the more aggressive students decide to take him to a dark corner for a beating during school hours, but whatever, it was fun.

Hibari takes a few meditative breaths while Tsuna becomes Dame-Soup, and then continues on up the stairs, like he wasn't just fighting with Tsuna and at least twenty other people for the past ten minutes. Tsuna swallows down his wheezes and stumbles after him, eager to follow.

Hibari glances over his shoulder. "Don't forget your shoes."

Tsuna stops, and takes a few steps backwards to see that his shoes are still laying next to the guy who held a gun to his head.

He had spent the entire fight  _barefoot_.

He quickly runs to pick them up and back to catch up with Hibari again. The stairs are mean to his already-strained muscles, but he feels the inexplicable need to keep up with Hibari's expectations. If Hibari expects him to be tired but operable after a fight of that magnitude, then that's what Tsuna's going to do.

They ascend in relative silence. Hibari's expression continues to be set into a glowing smile, which is starting to unsettle Tsuna a little, even after acquiring the knowledge that emoting with his face is normal to Hibari. Perhaps the reason it confuses him so much is the fabric of legend Hibari is swept up in, or perhaps it's because Tsuna cannot stop comparing him to celestial beings and men of great power. Idolization goes a long way in thinking it's weird that a person is acting like a person.

Like, it’s so unreal to think ‘does Hibari poop?’

Tsuna trips and stumbles at that sudden, unexpected, and unwanted intrusive thought, and gets a stair edge to the stomach for his troubles. He grunts and has to lay there for a few seconds to absorb the blinding pain the impact caused. The shoes, which he had been holding until this point, tumble down a few steps. Tsuna takes a moment to pity himself.

Hibari stops to look back at him. "...You don't wear socks."

"Huh? Oh." Tsuna, still holding his stomach, slides down to retrieve a shoe and pulls out a bunched-up black sock. "I do, I just figured it'd be too slippery."

"Hn." Hibari continues back up again. A man of few words. (Well, that's a lie, Tsuna has heard him talking whole paragraphs, but he's strangely curt and to-the-point with Tsuna, so his point holds.)

Tsuna shoves the sock back into the shoe, uses his toes to pick up the second one, and climbs to his feet with a series of squeaks. He had forgotten how painful even the slightest physical traumas can be.

Hibari wouldn't let this bother him, though.

Tsuna stretches out his abdominal muscles, gives them a few (painful) pats, and starts marching up again.

They emerge to the sight of an absolute crushing downpour of rain, almost deafening in its intensity. There is an umbrella leaning against the door frame, but there is only one of these, and Hibari is already heading towards it. Tsuna considers this, and considers the horrible, vicious storm brewing outside, chewing up the landscape with thousands of tiny, wet impacts. There is probably hail in there. Tsuna thinks he sees hail.

He's had worse.

"Well," Tsuna says as goodbye, and he tucks his shoes safely in his jacket and diligently marches into the rain.

It feels just as hard as it looks, and might actually be stronger than his shower. The water is cold, sharp, and makes his clothes stick unpleasantly to his body, but he made this decision, and he remains adverse to the idea of showing weakness in front of his boss. He's at least thankful that he decided to keep his shoes off — they'd be wrecked in this torrent.

He gets halfway through the parking lot before he's hit over the head with a rock.

The impact of the rock sends him careening into a muddy puddle, because he's Dame-Tsuna and that's just how Dame-Tsuna's life works. He lands with an 'ough', followed by a moment of spluttering when he gets some muddy water into his mouth. When he stands, he does so dripping with slimy brown gunk that used to be dirt.

He turns to glare back at his assailant, only to blink in surprise when he sees Hibari with his arm still slightly outstretched.

"You'll get sick like that," Hibari says. He's only speaking, but his voice carries easily across the distance and through the rain. "Students of Namimiddle should take care of their health."

Tsuna opens his mouth.

"Pygmy Hippo."

Tsuna shuts his mouth.

Then he opens it again. "...Why am I 'pygmy'?"

"You aren't strong enough to defend your territory. A pygmy hippo is the best you can claim."

Tsuna scowls at the implied insult and turns around, ready to start marching again. He'll charge a few boats, trample a few people, see who's a dangerous hippo _then_.

He gets hit over the head with a rock again.

He falls into a puddle again.

Tsuna's life is  _so hard_.

"Where are you going like that?" Hibari asks, still sounding disinterested despite the fact he felt the need to pelt Tsuna with rocks in order to get his attention, like some sort of particularly bratty child.

"...What is it?" Tsuna asks, slowly rising again.

"Don't endanger your health needlessly, Pygmy Hippo. You can call someone to retrieve you."

Tsuna twitches at the unwanted nickname, then at the underlying implication of 'if you get sick I can't fight you'. Tsuna has not only gotten over his fear of communicating with Hibari, but managed to last in an extended match involving several other parties trying to kill them both (not that he clearly remembers it, seeing as he was a little distracted by Hibari being god, but still). Can't he have even the slightest acknowledgment for such impressive feats?

With a sigh, rubbing the steadily growing sore spot on his head, Tsuna turns to Hibari and gives him a self-deprecating smile.

"Haven't you heard, Hibari-san? Fools can't catch colds."

  


* * *

 

 

Tsuna arrives at his house after what feels like hours, but is actually only twenty minutes. It's barely five, though the skies are dark with storm clouds. His shoes are safely stashed in his bag, along with his homework, where they are nice and dry, unlike the rest of Tsuna.

" _BOSS_!"

Oh yeah, Tsuna forgot about him.

Hayato springs out of the house and drags Tsuna inside by the collar. Tsuna allows himself to be patted down, fretted over, yelled at, and quickly undressed. He's so tired, and his muscles hurt, and he's really cold, and he's just... _so tired_.

He has to grab Hayato's hands before he can pull down his boxers, though. He’s in no mood to explain any of _that._

"I'm fine, I just forgot my umbrella," Tsuna assures him.

"You're a mess, though! With dirt! Did someone do something to you?" He pauses at the objects in Tsuna's left hand. "Why do you have knuckledusters?"

"Self-defense is a good skill to learn," Tsuna shrugs. He didn't see why he  _shouldn't_  take them. He has absolutely no memory of their acquisition, so it's barely stealing.

"Haha! As expected of Boss! You're really a decisive guy! Don't worry, I have plenty of books on how to fight with your fists! You'll be a master in no time!" Hayato punches the air like a boxer to demonstrate his point. Tsuna can't help but smile at the sight.

"Uhm...thanks, Hayato. I'll go take a bath now. I'm still filthy, even without the clothes." He places the weapons on the side table and makes his way upstairs.

"Oh, Tsu-kun? Dinner will be ready by the time you're down, okay?" His mother calls after him.

"Got it. My clothes are dirty and I need them tomorrow, so can you wash them?" He calls back.

"Of course! Let me get them—"

"I got it,  _mamma_!"

"Oh, thank you, Hayato-kun! Such a gentleman!"

Tsuna rubs the still-sore back of his head and tries not to look back. When on earth had Hayato started calling Sawada Nana 'mamma’? Tsuna has no doubt that his mother encouraged it, but...

Well, she's always wanted more kids. If his impromptu mafia tutor wants to be his brother figure too, who's he to judge. He's not going to complain about another person who likes him in the household.

Tsuna washes up and climbs into the bath to relax, letting his sore and freezing body seep into the porcelain. He needed this, he really did. He'll have to send Kusakabe a message when he gets back down, too...How the hell did one little position as the Offical Gopher escalate into something so annoying, anyway? The back of his head still aches, and he can see a small bruise forming along his stomach from his tumble on the stairs.

...Was it really annoying, though? The dodging game was fun, he can't deny that. He's never felt so...so  _alive_. So ready to move, so successful in his motions, so thorough in his thoughts, so quick to interpret. And when he did it, Hibari was happy! His boss, who was a distant terror ready to crush him at the slightest mis-step, actually liked what he was doing! Hell, the other members would probably like him more if they knew, too!

It's like he's gone so long without self-respect that the world is handing him some respect from other people to compensate.

Tsuna finishes up in the bath and changes into something warm and cosy before heading back down for dinner. Hayato is looking through at least five books at the same time while shoveling in his meal, and his mother is dishing out Tsuna's own serving.

"That's right...how did your first day at Koyama go?" Tsuna asks.

"Oh, yes, you recently transferred, didn't you?" Tsuna's mother quickly sits herself down and looks at Hayato attentively.

"O-oh, it's nothing much," Hayato stammers, nervous at the sudden attention. He clears his throat and puts on an air of bravado. "They weren't ready to back down, but I made sure they knew the stakes. Those idiots from West High couldn't take a single step in, and there wasn't anyone strong enough to fill Udo's shoes, so I ended up on top by the end of the day!"

Tsuna claps politely. "Ooohh. Incredible."

Hayato flushes and rubs the back of his head, grinning. "It was nothing! I just did what you wanted, Boss, and a good subordinate always follows orders to the letter!"

"So what are your plans for reforming the student body? Are you really going to to tutor the entire school?" Tsuna asks, purposefully ignoring the whole 'subordinate' thing. If his mom can do it, so can he.

"Hmm...There's a few good teachers, but most of them are pretty awful. I don't blame these guys for not wanting to listen. I was thinking I could overhaul the staff first, make sure these guys got good people looking out for them."

"So noble, Hayato-kun!" Tsuna's mother cheers, seeming to get a grasp on what they're talking about.

"Hayato...does a student really have that amount of power?" Tsuna points out.

Hayato laughs. "Don't worry, Boss! I made sure to assign myself as the Student Council President! There's no one left to stop me!"

"That fast?" Tsuna startles. Then, "Hayato, I don't think the Student Council has that much power eith—"

"So, what else should I start in on in the meantime, Boss? The curriculum is too easy, so I have lots of spare time," Hayato interrupts, eagerly leaning over the table.

Tsuna shrugs. If Hayato wants to rule the school through the student council, he can rule the school through the student council. Koyama is a mess — he could probably pull it off. "The place looks terrible. Maybe we can all do repairs?"

"Oh! Great idea, Boss! It can be a public service! All that graffiti is bound to chase off new teachers, so that should have been a given! Oh, but, uh..." Hayato trails off uncertainly. "Koyama's pretty under-budget, and all the supplies needed would cost a little..."

Tsuna glances to his mother. "Mom, can I borrow 100,000 yen?"

"For a school renovation? Of course, Tsu-kun, mama would be happy to! Don't worry, you pay it back when you feel you can, okay?" Tsuna's mother squeals.

Tsuna gestures to her. Hayato gapes.

"I-I-I couldn't possible just take your money over a small project like this, it's only-"

"Hayato," Tsuna says in what he hopes is an authoritative voice.

Hayato sits ramrod-straight in his seat. "Yes, Boss?"

"Leave it. If she can help, and wants to help, then we'll take it." He turns to his mother with the sort of warm smile that rarely graces his face lately. "Thanks, mom. I'll pay it back eventually. Maybe we can all work together over the weekend? It'll probably be fun."

"Oh, what a good idea!" His mother claps. "I'm sure I have some old painting suits lying around somewhere. Oh, it's been forever since I've gotten to go do something productive like this! Thank you for this wonderful opportunity, Hayato-kun!"

Hayato turns a little pink at the praise, but he's mostly looking at Tsuna with a strange expression on his face. It’s almost dark, and thick with an emotion Tsuna can't possibly interpret, but...

He feels his cheeks heat, and he fidgets with his food, making an effort to avoid eye contact for the remainder of the meal. Self-defense, his new studies, his inexplicable extended arm into Koyama, and a bit of mis-aimed worship he can deal with, for now.

He doesn’t know how to cope with the cold reminder of the last time he was looked at like that, though.

 


	6. The Introduction Of A Friend

"How is Tsu-kun doing so far?"

"Great! He hasn't asked for help once!"

"He's certainly careful with those notes..."

"I spent all night perfecting them! I made sure I explained everything to the closest detail!"

Tsuna pauses in his intensive eyeballing of his textbooks to glare over at Hayato. "Take better care of your body. You have a year to improve my studies."

"Sorry, Boss!" Hayato bows at an impressive 90 degree angle.

"Especially since you're apparently going to redo Koyama's curriculum. Do you even have your uniform yet?"

"Oh! Yes, I do! Let me go get it!" Hayato nearly falls over his own feet in an effort to race up the stairs. Tsuna buries his face in his hands. Will Hayato  _ever_  make any sense? He thought he had gotten kinda good at the whole delinquent thing. Maybe mafia underlings and delinquent underlings are too different to conflate.

"He's so full of energy," Tsuna's mother coos, holding a hand against her cheek. "It's nice to have noise in the house again."

"Yeah...I guess..." Tsuna mumbles. He had spent his late childhood almost entirely non-verbal, and even now, he's quiet in a way wrought from years of practice. His lumbering steps are the most noisy thing about him.

Did that really bother his mother so much?

He turns to stare at his workbook. Hayato had delivered; while it's taken him a good two hours to fight through what he feels should be a thirty-minute block, the notes he was provided with gave a thorough breakdown of the basics, and Hayato even provided cute mnemonics and anthropomorphizations as ways of remembering certain facts and dates, a technique Tsuna is positive came from an actual elementary school lesson plan.

So far, he's struggled on most of the problems, but finished them in a way that he felt confident in. It's the best he's managed in a long while, with the care and precision he never got in school, especially in an elevator school that kicked up into the next grade without considering his failures. He can see how much he failed to properly memorize from the previous school year, and how it affected his current learning level.

Tsuna's appreciation for Hayato's hard work is interrupted by Hayato himself, rapidly descending the stairs and flying into the sitting room in a flurry of hammering steps. He throws his arms out wide and grins, ready to receive comments on his new attire.

The Koyama uniform Tsuna has seen before — a long black chouran coat, with simple white trim at the collar and sleeves, and matching dress pants. Less common is the loud-looking graphic T-shirt Hayato has on that looks like it came from the resale shop Tsuna buys almost all of his clothes at. Gokudera's silver jewelry is ever-present, making him look...

Well, like a delinquent. He looks exactly like a delinquent. All he needs is neon yellow bleached hair and a wax strip to the eyebrows, and he'd be picturesque.

"You look so handsome, Hayato-kun!" Tsuna's mother cheers. "Hold on, let me take your picture!"

She rushes out of the room. Hayato turns his puppy-like attention onto Tsuna.

"I've never seen an outfit fit a person more," Tsuna says.

Hayato lights up like the Tokyo Tower.

Tsuna's mother quickly takes the picture, and then has Hayato and Tsuna pose together, and then takes a picture of Tsuna alone for no clear reason other than Son Privileges. She giggles and talks about showing off 'her handsome boys', which makes both Hayato and Tsuna go beet red and become very interested in schoolwork.

After another hour of work (during which Hayato is still wearing his Koyama uniform, for no adequately explored reason), Hayato quickly gets to checking. Tsuna raises his eyebrows at the sheer unbridled speed of his corrections. He knows Hayato is smart, and has a lot of experience to spare, but he can clear an entire page page of work in  _seconds_.

Soon, he's drumming his fingers in a silent count and assigning numbers to each section. Then he slides the booklet back to Tsuna. Tsuna swallows and tries not to do anything silly like squeeze his eyes shut, or run away and never come back.

He looks at the booklet.

_English - 20_

_Japanese - 42_

_Math - 36_

_Social Studies - 23_

_Science - 54_

Tsuna stares. All of them...all of them are  _double digits over ten_? Consistently? Actually, genuinely twenty percent and upwards? His grades are clearly still terrible, but that kind of jump is—

"My!" Tsuna's mother declares from across the coffee table. "That's so much better than the test papers you bring home!"

So, she sees it too. He's not hallucinating or anything. Next option.

He turns to Hayato. "Are you sure you graded this right?"

"What do you mean, am I sure? These questions are easy! I could answer them in my sleep! If you answered it right, you answered it right!"

"But..." Tsuna holds the booklet up helplessly. "I did so  _well_."

"Really? Most of those are failing grades, though," Hayato points out, confused now.

"Yeah, but they're  _better_  failing grades. And look! I passed science!"

"Well, yeah, science is pretty simple—"

"Science is my  _worst subject_!"

Hayato scratches his head, with the beginnings of frustration etched into his features. "Most of your answers were off from not remembering how to do the equation properly...in the other subjects, your memorization is kinda bad. It's not something we can't work out, right?"

"But...I just..." Tsuna desperately gestures at the book again, unwilling to completely believe he is not the world's biggest idiot. "You were firing off university level questions, and now everything's so, and..."

"I promised I'd be a good tutor, Boss!" Hayato half-shouts. "I know I'm not really good at teaching, but I took out plenty of books from the library, and I reviewed them tirelessly during every waking moment today! I had a book in one hand, and bombs in the other!"

Tsuna looks wildly to his mother, hoping she didn't hear that, or at least take it literally. She seems oblivious, though enchanted by Hayato's immense willpower and fighting spirit.

"But why am I so...and this is so..." Tsuna shakes his hair up with his fingers, and takes an incredibly embarrassing moment to untangle them from the maze of knots he ends up getting them lodged in. Nothing is going smoothly tonight.

"Hm...I think your teachers are at fault, here," Hayato nods decisively. "You should be getting average grades, but some bad teachers screwed up how much you knew, especially in the long run. If you want your grades to improve, I'm going to have to take over your lesson plans every day!"

"You really don't, uh, have to..."

"I'm your tutor! I'm getting paid to do this! And it's the least I could to for the kindness you've shown me!"

 _What kindness?_  Tsuna doesn't say. He doesn't want to undermine this good streak he has going, as confusing and scary as it has suddenly become.

"Tsu-kun's grades, finally going up! Oh, everything is going so wonderful lately! I should go write your father about this, he has this address that he comes back to now and again..."

Well, that killed the mood pretty quick.

When Tsuna's mother bustles out of ear shot, Tsuna gives Hayato a reproachful look. "You gonna write to him too?"

Hayato looks serious, which Tsuna appreciates. "I won't tell him any details you don't want shared. This early, I'll just say you aren't communicating well. It'll be enough for a start."

"...Thanks, Hayato." Tsuna leans over and bumps Hayato's arm with his head. "I really appreciate this."

"Don't worry, Boss. If he's not gonna be a good influence for you, I'll be sure to be one in his stead. No one deserves to be left behind like that."

Tsuna closes his eyes.

"Hey, Hayato?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you calling yourself my dad?"

"U-uh..."

"It's fine." Tsuna gives Hayato a floppy-armed pat. "Whatever you do, you'll probably do it better than he ever could."

 

* * *

 

Tsuna wakes up feeling like hell-grilled roadkill.

The bad kind of roadkill. Not just dead animal roadkill. Pancake roadkill. He feels ironed onto his bed, and there's something ugly and hot at the back of his throat that feels too deeply settled to remove with a glass of water. His eyes feel crusty enough to support a major underwater ecosystem. All his muscles hurt a little bit, though that one is probably because of the whole battle with Hibari thing.

He lets out a long, low groan to express his displeasure at this horrible turn of events. Upon receiving no pity from the cold, unhearing ears of the universe, he sighs and gets out of bed.

First order of business is to give his face and the back of his throat a vicious cleansing, at least enough to feel like his cells aren't all made of razors and hatred. Unfortunately, it still feels like someone baked a century-old turd at the back of his throat and smoked it out his eyes even after he brushed his teeth, gargled mouthwash, and splashed his face, so he's back to square one on the suffering gameboard. He can only persevere.

At the dinner table, Hayato once again has half a dozen books open while madly scribbling into a notebook. Tsuna snuffles the sensation of dry, white hot magma at the back of his nostrils off and digs into his breakfast. Hayato makes bizarre small talk based roughly on various tidbits he finds in his books — most of them history textbooks, Tsuna can see, and he supposes it makes sense, considering that Hayato is apparently not actually from Japan.

Tsuna typically walks to school alone, so he feels safe in sneaking a medical mask up his sleeve before he and Hayato suit up to go. Hayato, now spending his first day in a gakuran, has added twice as much gel as usual to his hair, and is practically sparkling with youthful spirit. Tsuna supposes it's nice that  _some_  people can spend their mornings not feeling like their soul has been slow-cooked like a fat Christmas ham overnight and then coated with a thick layer of ashes and loathing.

He is  _so sick_.

Tsuna quickly applies the mask as he turns the corner, hooking it around his ears and adjusting it so it covers his mouth and nose. He is neither sneezing nor coughing, but his body will eventually pick up that it is burning through a horrible virus, and that point might happen in the middle of the day, so it's best to be safe.

Besides, it's irresponsible to have your orifices open when you're sick in public places. Basic Japanese etiquette, here.

He, after much consideration, decides to dig the cat ears out of his school bag and fix them carefully on his head. He feels terrible, but he can  _probably_  still survive a run-in with Hibari. Tsuna honestly doubts he would spend ten minutes flat on one fight during school hours. Hibari is murderous and violent, but not irresponsible.

In his haze of sickness, self-assurance, and anticipation for his boss' weird fixation on trying to hit him, Tsuna drifts easily into the trappings of middle school drama. Or rather, into the circle of middle school boys, who are here because of drama. Specifically, Mochida drama. Tsuna has never paid very much attention to Mochida, beyond him going above and beyond to prove his ego (to the point of studying himself half to death to skip a grade, which Tsuna actually thought was kind of admirable), but he knows he can get really sour really quickly when his pride is injured. Now, if only Tsuna couldremember  _how_  he injured Mochida's pride.

"Well, if it isn't Dame-Tsuna," one of the group sneers. He's not one of Mochida's friends.

"That's my name," Tsuna grinds back. How did he lose his voice  _overnight_? This is terrible.

"Aren't you a little  _warm_  in that gakuran?" Mochida himself also sneers. It's very sneer-y over in this dark, secluded corner.

When did they get into a dark, secluded corner again?

"I'm immune to weather," Tsuna sighs. In reality, he's so thin that any extra layers are a boon. He has a bad habit of skipping breakfast that he isn't sure Hayato's entrance will cure, and always somehow ends up nibbling through his lunch and breaks. He's sustained on rice crackers and dreams, at this point. It is entirely possible someone could snap his arm clean in two if they grabbed it hard enough, and Tsuna likes to wear long-sleeved shirts and jackets to disabuse anyone of this notion, even in summer.

It isn't paranoia if they're really out to get you, after all.

Tsuna shakes his head. Right. Mochida. What did Mochida want.

"What do you want," Tsuna says out loud. He should have done that first.

Mochida, to Tsuna's immense surprise, grabs Tsuna by the lapels and shoves him against a wall. Very forward! Something must have happened. Mochida is usually more passive-aggressive than this. Actually, thinking further on this, Tsuna doesn't think Mochida has ever so much as touched him. Mochida isn't a bully, he just hates Tsuna. This level of aggression is kind of bizarre.

"You think you're hot shit because you managed to con your way into the Disciplinary Committee, you little punk?"

"Kyouko made me sign up," Tsuna dispenses automatically.

This only serves to make him angrier. "And now you're just the king of Namimori Middle, huh? Got everyone under your thumb?"

"N...No?" This is so weird.

"Why not, huh? You got the most popular girl in school, you're in with the most powerful group in town, and you barely have to work for it! You've always been worthless, stumbling around and failing your tests like an idiot, while people like me have been busting our asses, and then you're at the top of the world? That's  _bullshit_!"

"Are you _crying_?"

"I'M NOT CRYING," Mochida roars, but he steps back to wipe his face. Tsuna must have really pissed him off now, because he's pointing directly at his masked nose and glaring. "You and me. Kendo match. Lunch period. I'll show you who's at the top."

"N...Neither of us...?" Tsuna blinks his dry, stinging eyes. "Hibari-san is..."

"Goddamn moron!" Mochida shoves Tsuna against the wall again, and marches out into the daylight.

Yeah, that was probably not the weirdest thing Tsuna has had to sit through in the past week and a half, but it's still pretty odd. Mochida, suddenly violent with Tsuna? Usually only the 'bad eggs' push him up against walls. Tsuna doesn't even see any of his friends around, either. The guys that had circled around the confrontation are...

Ah yes. The bad eggs.

"You're not gonna go to the fight," a hunkering mass of muscle Tsuna identifies as The One That Likes To Throw Tsuna's Things Around During Lunch Break snorts.

"But you were gonna lose anyway," another one, stocky and growing some early facial hair, whom Tsuna knows roughly as The One That Likes To Use Tsuna As A Punching Bag On Rare Occasions.

And the stocky one pulls his fist back.

Ah, yes. And here's the rare occasion.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna can barely remember the last time he got a beating. He usually keeps his head down too much for it to be satisfying. He supposes the pleasure of rigging a fight that's meant to take place hours from now was too great a temptation for them. It's been quite a few months he got this many fists to this many body parts.

The dark corner he had hazily identified was actually an alley in early-morning shade, and as his body refuses to move, he's graced with the pleasure of the sun rising over his crumpled form, laying in a pile of the adjacent houses' garbage. Covered in blood. Torn uniform. With a medical mask and cat ears on. It is definitely not his best moment.

He lets out another blank-faced screaming groan not unlike the one he let out while ironed onto the bed, but with more pain to it. Every punch to his body left a throbbing bruise that sends aches out through his bones, rippling along his muscles like heavy chains. Chains binding him to this giant pile of garbage. The only positive here is that it smells more like fresh compost than anything that would make him sick. He does not want to upchuck in this situation. If only because it would totally destroy his already horribly battered ribcage.

He thinks an hour might have passed just lying there, like a worthless sack of cat trash. He thinks he should be more conscious of the passage of time, but everything is hazy and sliding in and out together, see-sawing like his thoughts, never in the same place, back and forth. His brain feels like an enormous, radioactive puddle.

His ribs hurt a lot.

Since there's not much to look at besides an overcast sky and the walls around him, what with how painful attempting to crane his head is, he feels sensitive to his own body, the way his mask is still sitting at a decent angle on his face, still protecting the world from his gross sick germs, and the cat ear headband clinging on his head, still ready to signal a nice, satisfying dodge match with Hibari. Or tsukkomi friends. Whatever works.

Tsuna wishes he could move like that with the musclemass and stocky kid. Dodging like it's a second nature, like he was designed to never be hit, to be invincible. Every punch that's showing its work on his body now just harmlessly flying through the air. Him, dancing in between. Him being strong, and not worthless, put in his place for what appears to be absolutely no reason at all—

—Oh, now it's starting to rain. Well, that's nice.

The rain is weaker now, just remnants of yesterday's storm, but it's still cold and it still gets him soaked through. Tsuna is trying really hard to feel bad about himself at this point, since the weather seems to call for it, but all he can think about is _pain_  and  _hotness_  and now  _cold_ , and maybe worrying a little if his body can handle that temperature contradiction.

Or...Tsuna brings a hand very carefully up to his head, and presses ice-cold fingers against his forehead. He almost flinches at the warmth underneath, despite being pelted with frigid water. He's running a fever. Probably a bad one, but he's a little biased with glaciers for fingertips. Do colds even work this fast? Tsuna feels colds should not work this fast.

Being cold weakens the immune system, but Tsuna hasn't really been exposed to much besides gargling puddle water, so he can definitely blame Hibari for this horrible turn events. This is 100% his fault. If he hadn't felt the need to pelt Tsuna with rocks like a child, none of this would be happening.

Well, he'd probably still get beaten up. But he could at least have the presence of mind to be miserable about it!

Tsuna's arm is still semi-operable, so he lifts it again to check his watch, which he just remembers he has, on his arm, right there. It tells him he's been at this for two and a half hours. He cannot believe he is this good at lounging around on a pile of garbage. He's breaking records, here. He should get a medal for longest time being pathetic in someone else's trash.

Trying to move his torso brings a scream of pain through his lips, so he still can't get up. He may have actually genuinely broken his ribs. How does someone with broken ribs fight in a kendo match? Why would Mochida want Tsuna's ribs broken? They've barely spoken. He hardly even yells at Tsuna in public. This is completely uncharacteristic of him.

Tsuna closes his eyes and practices making high-pitched groans to the sky. This is really boring. In movies, it usually cuts to like...a hospital, or a stranger's bed, or a grave with narration over top.

Is this going to cut to his grave? Is he going to die here?

Well, no. This is an open road. There's bound to be someone walking by, not that Tsuna can see anyone at this angle. Still, the rain could get to him. Make him freeze to death. It could happen.

He takes a breath to yell, but unlike guttural whining, that amount of pressure on his chest sends excruciating pain lancing through his already-suffering ribcage, and all the air sucked in is let out in a short, wheezing scream. The lightning-vicious stabbing sensation makes him realize how numb the centre of his body feels, not just from the rain, but in general.

Yes. Something definitely happened to his ribcage.

Tsuna can feel a lasting aftershock of lucidity spike through him, and he realizes that no, Mochida wouldn't do this, but stocky guy would find this  _hilarious_. Mochida left before stocky guy went in on him. Tsuna isn't sure if Mochida knows that stocky guy broke his ribcage, though, because Tsuna sure as hell didn't, and they're  _his_  ribs. He'll have to just...angrily, quietly forgive him.

He's going to give stocky guy a thrashing of his life, though. By telling Hibari, of course. He's still weak as rice paper. That's what he's doing in a pile of trash.

Tsuna's breaths are starting to come in wheezing and short, and he's still bored, and a glance to his watch tells him he's hit the three-hour garbage-resting mark now. He's reached new levels of pathetic. Maximum uselessness. Worthless. Everything feels thick as molasses and full of bitter iron and blood, pain, rain, numbness, shaking, what feels like the corner of a pizza box poking his legs.

Yep. Definitely going to die here.

 

* * *

 

Kyouko hates people she cares about being hospitalized.

The hospital is almost hostile, too sterile and unkind, and it dredges up unhappy memories. She sprints through the halls, looking wildly for Tsuna's room number. Her brother and Hana are close behind her, shouting for her to slow down.

In the end, she doesn't have to find the number; Hibari and Mochida are already there, and since the only thing they have in common is Tsuna, she doesn't have to guess too hard at why they're there. She skids to a stop, and immediately crumples, gasping for air.

"Kyouko!" Hana calls, skidding in next to her and patting her on the back. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Never mind that!" Kyouko pushes her away. "Tsuna, is he—"

"He broke a rib," Hibari says coolly.

"A  _rib_!" Kyouko wails.

Hibari's eyes flick up to Ryouhei, and the glaring teenager slung over his back. His eyes flick back down to Kyouko, clearly seeking an answer to his unspoken question.

…Right. This guy. It was a bit of a mess, really. At lunch, Mochida was getting fired up about something, and it was making Kyouko nervous — people who get rejected by their crushes getting steamed about something the next day is never a good sign. But he just disappeared, and then, inexplicably, so did Hibari. Then someone came running in at the end of the lunch break yelling about how Tsuna had to go to the hospital, and Hibari was  _probably_  not responsible for that, so she can only assume he was taking care of the people who were.

Kyouko, Hana, and Ryouhei had all ditched school the instant they heard — Kyouko's brother simply to keep his eye on her — and ran all the way to the hospital. Halfway there, Kyouko stumbled into a boy from another school who was attempting to drop by Nami Middle to visit Tsuna, and when he heard what had happened, he nearly threw himself into traffic in order to get to the hospital. They made Ryouhei carry him, since he wouldn't listen to Kyouko and Hana begging him to watch where he was going.

Kyouko decides on "He was being too enthusiastic."

"It's just the rib? Boss is fine, right?" The boy from the other school (Koyama, Kyouko thinks) demands, scrambling off of Ryouhei and trying to make for the door, radiating concern.

Hibari drives his tonfa directly in front of his face to stop him. "He's sick. He doesn't need any more crowding. Leave."

"Piss off! I'm the Boss' tutor! It's my job to look after him, you bastard!"

"Tsuna has a tutor? I didn't know Tsuna had a tutor! Why wouldn't he tell me he has a tutor?" Kyouko cries.

Hana rubs her back comfortingly and glares at this tutor. "Will you shut up? You're just stressing everyone out!"

Through the chaos, Mochida just fidgets with a terrible anxiety. Kyouko hopes he didn't do anything to Tsuna.  _For his sake_. She's heard the Namimori patrol officers can be very stern.

"Don't try to stop me!" The tutor roars, yanking out a set of…dynamite? Kyouko finally realizes where she recognizes him from; outside the school, the explosives boy! She can hardly conflate the two, since he had his hair down and wasn't wearing any glasses at the time, but she doubts carrying around dynamite is a new trend amongst delinquents.

Hibari simply breaks the first toss of dynamite in half and bashes the tutor over the head in two fluid strikes.

Kyouko crawls over and puts out the fuse, just in case it explodes anyway. It's a bad idea to be noisy in a hospital.

"I'll bite you to death," Hibari growls, placing his foot on the tutor's back.

"Uhm, I don't think we should be fighting," Kyouko tries to interject.

Luckily, they don't have time to escalate beyond that. Tsuna's mom skids into the hall, looking just as flustered and out-of-breath as Kyouko did when  _she_  first got here.

" _Tsu-kun!_  Is my Tsu-kun okay?"

"Someone broke his rib!" Kyouko declares, hoping Nana will dress down Hibari on her behalf.

"Oh my goodness! Excuse me!" She bounds up and tries to get into the hospital room, but Hibari drives the tonfa in her way too.

"No crowding while the secretary recovers."

"The..." She looks momentarily distraught, but then brightens when she registers the words. "Oh my goodness, are you the Disciplinary Committee Chairman? Thank you for taking care of my Tsu-kun, he's so much more energetic lately! Is he going to be okay? The bone didn't shatter, did it?"

"It's just a broken rib! I've had worse!" The tutor barks from under Hibari's foot, possibly just to be contrary.

"Have you?  _Goodness,_  Hayato-kun, you ought to go see a doctor to see if everything's healed right!" She bends down and quickly pulls Hayato up, checking him over. "Do your bones ache during the cold? During damp days? It's important to get treated properly! Come now, I know a nurse, and she can tell us if there's any doctors available, okay?"

Hayato flushes, and struggles to speak as Tsuna's mom quickly leads him off, completely oblivious to the previous mood.

"She is a very trusting woman," Hana notes dully.

"Tsuna says she always wanted to be a mom. She's always ready to care for someone," Kyouko faintly agrees.

Hibari looks in the direction Tsuna's mom left in, seeming oddly...unsettled. He adjusts himself uneasily, retracts the tonfas, and puts them back in his pockets. He stares at the floor a few seconds, looking a bit lost, before recovering himself and looking down at the group in disgust.

"People crowding unnecessarily will be bitten to death. Leave."

Kyouko glares at him. "We just want to see Tsuna!"

"If we can't- Hey, do you know who attacked him? Are there witnesses?" Ryouhei asks, raising up to his full height to meet Hibari eye-to-eye.

Mochida flinches.

"I've already taken care of it. More importantly..." Hibari takes a moment to glare at the door to Tsuna's room. "I'm a little more surprised that he was assaulted by those vultures, rather than retaliation."

Ryouhei goes grim. "Retaliation?"

"For biting the rest of those high-school herbivores to death. He assisted," Hibari says plainly.

Kyouko feels light-headed. Tsuna did? Tsuna did that?

Slowly, she gets to her feet.

"You mean you've been dragging him into fights?" Ryouhei barks, fists gripped.

"He was there to observe," Hibari replies.

"But you still put him in danger! That's low!"

"His actions were his own."

"O-Oi, Kyouko," Hana murmurs.

"You think a guy like that can defend himself in that situation? It's up to the strong to protect the weak! Don't you have any sense of honour? That's  _extremely low_!"

"I just explained it to you. His actions were his own."

"Kyouko, hey—"

 _"You_ _—"_

"If you're insisting on crowding, I'll have to remove you." Hibari places his hands in his pockets.

_"Kyouko!"_

_"HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"_  Kyouko sprints from the opposite end of the hall, wielding a — surprisingly heavy — broom. Hibari startles and holds his weapons out to defend against the overhead strike. Kyouko teeters back and hits him again and again and again.

" _How dare you!_  How could you put Tsuna in danger! How could you let him get in a fight!  _How could you let him get hurt!_  How can you call yourself the leader of the Disciplinary Committee! You don't have any discipline at all! Jerk! You're horrible! Cruel!"

Hibari makes a small irritated noise and thrusts his hand out too fast for Kyouko to see. The tonfa collides with the back of her head, and for a moment, she sees stars. She wobbles and falls to her knees.

"Herbivores need to know how to listen to others."

"Kyouko!" Ryouhei yells.  _"You bastard_ _—"_

"I-It's okay..." Kyouko slumps and lets the broom falls from her hands. She gently reaches and touches the tender egg forming on the back of her skull. "It's okay...I attacked him first...It's like you said…to fight when you have to _..._ "

"Th-That's not right, Kyouko! He didn't need to hit you!"

"I'm fine..." Kyouko says softly. She turns to look up at him, with stunned tears of pain sliding down her cheeks.

Ryouhei attacks Hibari.

In the end, Hibari beats up everyone, even Mochida, just for being there. It doesn't make Kyouko feel a whole lot better.

 

* * *

 

_The river is thin and winding and shallow, and it's just the right size for some harmless fun. Splashing, lounging, watergun fights and a child's territory war, all visions dancing through the heat-haze of summer._

_Today, in winter, it's Tsuna's school books._

_He's eight and quiet and there's something dark and terrified trembling underneath his skin that the more unkind children can taste, and they like seeing it emerge from the cold, pale blankness of his expression. The think it's anxiety or weakness, but it's really just expectation for the unfortunate. He's begun_ _feeling resigned, and the distant parts of his mind encouraging him to soldier on and let the pain and feelings go are getting louder, now._

 _He_ _'s always so cold._

 _There aren't a lot of kids who lash out at him like this, but everyone hates him. He used to be just useless, but someone said he's Dame-Tsuna and he's not sure how to prove them wrong so everyone repeats it, and that's what he is. His mama says that there's nothing wrong with that, it isn't something you have interpret as hateful or mean, and it's nice taking care of people like Tsuna, but Tsuna dreams of a time when everyone loves him and wouldn't dare hurt him and he's strong and can beat up all the bullies and he doesn_ _'t have to do anything he doesn't want to._

_But for now, there's his books, steadily absorbing freezing river water._

_He takes off his shoes and socks and wades out, wincing at the bite of the cold, but he knows he only uses pencil so his workbooks are going to be ugly but still okay to turn in. He fishes each book out, tosses them out to shore, and shudders as the cold seeps into his feet, making them numb and sensitive to the chewing-pressing of the rocks underneath._

_He has a lot of scattered papers around. They had torn them out and sent them flying individually. He's glad it isn't cold enough to snow yet; he's not sure he could do this if it were any more frigid than this._

_He barely notices the girl approach him._

_Long brown hair, wide brown eyes, gently toying with the hem of her coat. There's a boy behind her screaming about something and chucking his shoes across the road, which is clearly none of Tsuna's business._

_"What are you doing?" The girl asks._

_Tsuna purses his lips and avoids eye contact. He's always had trouble speaking to strangers, and his definition of_ _'stranger' is getting less and less specific, lately._

_"Did someone toss your books in here?" She asks, sounding horrified, and then her shoes are flying off too. She makes to run into the river, but screams at the sudden cold and jumps back. Her companion has no such reservations, and wades in to his knees, yelling about how extreme this activity is._

_Really, definitely none of Tsuna's business._

_The girl acclimates herself to the sensation of the water, while Tsuna gathers looseleaf and piles it on his arm. He feels skittish as she nears. He knows she's not going to hurt him, but the determined approach makes him feel uncertain in his own skin, like he's done something wrong. The urge to flee is overwhelming, and it requires a few repetitions of 'that's silly' to get the urge to go away._

_He squeezes his eyes shut, reminds himself of that determination in the back of his head, and continues retrieving the emptied contents of his bag._

_The boy helps, with surprising speed. The rocks must hurt, marching through the water that quickly, but he seems to be made of nothing BUT the determination that Tsuna uses to stamp out the bad feelings._

_The girl helps too, and she's focusing so hard on it that Tsuna feels a little better just looking at her. With three of them collecting, they manage to get everything much faster than Tsuna could possibly hope._

_"Th'nks," he mumbles._

_"It's sooo coooold," the girl whines. Then, she grabs Tsuna by the arm and tugs him up the riverbank. "Come to our house, we can use the kotatsu. Mama never lets us but I bet she will now."_

_"Oh...I..." Tsuna wants to. The expectation of heading straight home after this sits heavy on his back, but he wants to change his mind and go along with that arm._

_"Let's go get EXTREMELY warmed up!" The boy declares._

_"Extremely!" The girl agrees._

_Tsuna feels too nervous and too cold to speak properly, but seeing as he's being dragged like this, he can't really say no. The lack of choice is freeing, and a big grin finds itself on his face._

_There's something under his skin, shaking and terrified, but it's not anxiety, and it's not weakness, and it_ _'s slowly, slowly being eaten away._

_Right now, those worries don't seem so close to the surface. Tsuna likes the way that feels._

 

* * *

 

Tsuna has never felt worse.

"I told you to take care of your health, Pygmy Hippo."

Oh, nevermind.  _Now_  he's never felt worse.

First of all, so much pain. Dull, oozing, throbbing, aching pain. Mostly in the chest, though he already knows what's up with that one. Second, he's _still sick_ , and he can feel the fever burning inside his skull. Third, Hibari's here, so really, he may as well be dead for all the good living is doing him right now. There's a thick, gooey feeling in the air, like an electric current through a vat of jello, but he's not sure if that's the hospital's natural impression or if he's still totally delirious. Probably the latter.

And he's  _cold_.

His eyes feel sticky and sour (somehow), but he manages to pry them open to observe his surroundings. White hospital room, green curtains, a window with fluttering white curtains, under which Hibari sits, reading a book, because he apparently cannot stand to be close to another human being for longer than a minute unless he's fighting them.

Tsuna gurgles.

"You broke a rib," Hibari continues, not looking up.

"Just one?" Tsuna rasps.

That gets a smirk, which Tsuna thinks is honestly kind of rude. Does Hibari know how much pain he was in, lying in the garbage like that? He was cold. And his bones were broken. He had a guesstimate at...lots of ribs, all broken. That was what he felt like. Hibari doesn't need to be  _rude_.

"Rude," Tsuna mumble-gurgles. Mumburgles.

Hibari stands and passes by Tsuna's bed, giving him a considering look as he does so, but still progressing onward through the door and out of the room.

" _Ruuuuude_ ," Tsuna mumburgles again.

Then the explanation of Hibari's swift departure comes in the form of a crowd of people rushing in. His mother, Hayato, Kyouko, Ryouhei (Ryouhei?), Hana, and Takeshi  _(Takeshi?)_  all pile in, eager to get some time in with him. As if summoned, a headache erupts from his grey matter, a cherry on top of a perfect sundae of terrible.

There was absolutely no point to how awful his day has been. It's just being bad for the sake of it at this point. He can't believe the universe could be so mean to him.

Surprisingly, Tsuna sees Mochida hovering uncertainly at the doorway. Tsuna makes a pathetic arm-wobble at him and says "Not your fault." He has to repeat it three times under the rush of greetings and fretting. He's not sure why it's not Mochida's fault, but it's important that he has to tell him. It's important. Somehow.

After the initial chaos, it finally dies down into simple, turn-based dialogue Tsuna can understand.

"I was so worried when you didn't come to school," Kyouko gasps, teary-eyed and clutching Tsuna's hand. Tsuna wants to shake it off so he can pat her head or do something comforting, but the best he can manage is empathetic grunting.

"Oh, Tsu-kun, who would so something like this? My poor boy..." That's his mother. She sounds really upset. When was the last time he's heard her this upset?

" _I'LL KILL 'EM!_ " Hayato.

"Shut up, you stupid monkey, he just woke up!" Hana.

"I promised I wouldn't get into any fights, but I'll report them to the police station, to the EXTREME!" Ryouhei.

Shuffling from the door. Tsuna squints at Mochida, looking like a shamed dog. While everyone is fretting (Takeshi strangely quiet in the background), Kyouko follows his gaze, and makes an uncertain sound.

Mochida clears his throat. "Uh...Hibari-san already...you know."

"Fast," Tsuna laughs, and then lets out a grunt of surprised pain at the jabbing in his chest.

"Sshh, you're not healed yet, okay? Be careful." His mother runs a comforting hand through his hair, and it does swift work of relaxing him. He leans into the touch. He doesn't get paid this sort of attention any more, he's too old to be babied. He misses the feeling of fingers through his hair. His mom misinterpreted how much he hates having his back rubbed, maybe.

"You've been really suspicious all this time," Hayato growls, going in on Mochida. "You have something to do with this?"

"Not his fault," Tsuna whispers.

Mochida looks so sad. Good. Unless he thinks it _is_  his fault, in which case, bad. Tsuna isn't sure how he's supposed to be reacting to either of these things, but they're simple enough rules to follow.

"I would have came back right away if I knew what happened to him," Mochida says quickly, "I told Hibari-senpai who did it as soon as I heard. I thought he just chickened out and went home!"

"So you  _were_  involved?" Hayato grabs him by the shirt and lifts him up. Tsuna groans, a long, loud beast grunt of frustration.

"Not in the room!" Kyouko says sharply, and she leaves her post by Tsuna's side to start shooing Hayato and Mochida out. Takeshi, after a moment of wild-eyed hesitation, quickly darts out of view. Tsuna has no idea what the hell he's even doing here, honestly. He's said less than Hibari did, and all Hibari did was be rude to him and leave without saying goodbye.

Ryouhei has to be restrained by Hana to keep from bothering the other patients, and that process leads to him being carted off too. Tsuna is alone with his mom now.

"Everyone was so worried about you, Tsu-kun," she says. There's a watery smile on her face. "I'm so happy you have so many friends now."

He has like, two and a half friends. He has absolutely no idea what she's talking about.

"I heard about how you were found, and I just...I'm so glad you weren't hurt too badly."

"F'l terrbblll," says Tsuna.

"I know, and you can just rest up here until you feel better! That's what hospitals are for! Hayato brought all your studying things over, so you won't fall behind on your work, okay?"

"'Kay."

"Now, I love you, and I'm going to go fetch you some things from the house, okay?" She presses a gentle kiss to Tsuna's forehead that fills him with warmth and bustles off.

The room is empty and silent, save for the muffled noises coming from the scuffle outside.

It grows louder for a second, then quiet again. Tsuna glances towards the door, at Kyouko.

"Sorry," Tsuna says.

"You didn't do anything. What are you apologizing for?"

"Dunno. Sorry."

Kyouko gently walks over to his side and sits on the stool, fingers fidgeting in her lap. She looks so sad. That's not good. He doesn't want her to look sad. This is all his fault.

"Sorry," he says again.

"I'm the one that should be apologizing," she whispers. "It's my fault you got hurt. If I hadn't made you join the Disciplinary Committee, you wouldn't have gotten...and then you wouldn't be..."

"No. No, s'fun. I like it."

"You don't have to make me feel better, Tsuna. If you want, I can ask them to—"

"No. S'fu...It's  _fun_. I mean it. I like it. I'm happy." Tsuna squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on speaking properly. "I feel better. People like me. I'm happy, and I feel good about myself. It's...It's nice."

"I heard..." Kyouko bows her head, looking even more troubled. "I heard you get in fights with Hibari-san too—"

"S _'fun_ ," Tsuna giggles.

Kyouko's back goes ramrod straight in shock. " _Tsuna!_ "

"It is, fun, I'm happy, I like, with Hibari-san too...I mean, it's not...bad. It's just play fights. Ryouhei fights," Tsuna struggles to explain.

Kyouko holds a hand to her chest and lets out a sigh of relief. "Just a match, then?"

Tsuna nods, still giggling slightly. "He can't hit me."

"But if  _he_  can't hit you, then how..." Kyouko looks over Tsuna's chest with an expression even darker than before. It's really hard to comfort people when you're feverish and probably high on pain meds, Tsuna thinks.

"Sorry. Dame-Tsuna. Even when I'm good at things. But I'm good at it, with the matches, I feel happy. I feel strong and I want to...want to do more, I don't feel like Dame-Tsuna, you know? Don't take me out, I like it, don't..."Tsuna shakes his head to communicate his unhappiness with the idea of _leaving_  that, of losing that level of self-assurance and strength and...Satisfaction?

It's scary and uncertain being good at things, but he's having fun, and he doesn't want to avoid it or anything. He's so close to being normal! The delinquent politics are annoying and dangerous and he'd rather do without them, but everything else just feels  _nice_. He feels nice! He feels nice about himself, and what he's doing.

It feels so weird. He loves it. Why was he complaining about it? It's great. He loves it. He doesn't want it to stop. He got good grades.

Was that part of the delinquent thing? Whatever.  _Good grades._

"You've found something you love too, huh?" Kyouko says softly, this time with less tears and crying, which is great. She brushes Tsuna's mussed hair into some sort of arcane placement he can't divine without a mirror. His spacial recognition isn't great at the moment. "Everyone else seems to have something they're excited about. I barely have any hobbies."

"Ballet?"

Kyouko giggles. "I haven't done ballet since I was ten! And then I wanted to be a policewoman..."

"W'ver's fine, you can do it," Tsuna encourages.

"Geez, you always say that!" Kyouko pinches his arm. Tsuna lets out an indignant squawk at the mishandling, making her laugh even more. Tsuna gives her a big goofy grin at the sight. Kyouko should be smiling all the time. Definitely.

"Not that hurt. Don't worry. Mochida said Hibari-san already got 'em. S'alright. Everybody worrying over nothing. And you...you can do ballet, or policewomaning..."

"You're really, really out of it," Kyouko finally realizes.

" _Balletwomaning_ ," Tsuna says seriously.

Kyouko buries her head into Tsuna's blankets to hide her silent gigglefit, and while Tsuna feels a little like he's being mocked, it's still technically Kyouko smiling, so he's not complaining about it.  _Yet_.

There's a beat of silence as she recovers. Then it stretches, out through the room, with those muffled voices distant outside their quiet sanctuary. A slightly less muffled voice comes from his blankets. "You're not Dame-Tsuna, you know. You're just Tsuna. Yell at anyone who says otherwise, for me, okay?"

"Real loud," Tsuna assures.

Kyouko raises her head and grins at him like the sun and everything warm and good and wholesome about the world, sparkling happy and fantastic in his eyes, god she's right, he is so terribly out of it.

"Gonna sleep this off. Sick. Need bedrest." Tsuna waves her wildly off, and she fakes a pout and slaps at his hand before giving it a firm shake and leaving the room.

Quiet again. His single damaged rib is hurting again from all the laughing and talking and breathing. He thinks he might actually have some bruised ribs, and Hibari just didn't bring it up because he's a monster and doesn't think bruised ribs are a big deal, seeing as he gives them to people all the time.

Still, he didn't really get hurt as badly as he thought he did. Maybe he was being dramatic. Maybe everyone's being dramatic. Maybe everything will be okay tomorrow and the day after that, and all the drama will stop...drama-ing. That's definitely going to happen. He'll make sure of it. He might even force himself to walk, show off how not-hurt he is.

 _Oh, wait. Sick. Right. Forgot about being sick._  Forget that whole plan, then.

There's a quiet, barely audible rustle. Tsuna's eyes snap to the green curtains around his bed.

"H'llo?" He rasps. Then, stronger, "Hello?"

A single head of black hair peeks out sheepishly from the edges, a mild smile accompanying it.

"Sorry," says Takeshi. "I hope you don't mind me eavesdropping. I didn't mean to..."

"S'fine. Don't worry. Why are you here?"

"Oh...uh..." Takeshi looks uncomfortable again. His usual smile is weak and brittle on his face, and Tsuna wants to throw something at him and see it connect nice and easy, tear that smile down. It is  _pissing him off_.

Oh hey, look, an apple.

_Whack._

Takeshi stands there, looking exasperated at Tsuna's choice of weapon. To Tsuna's frustration, no sign of impact appears on Takeshi's forehead, where the apple had hit him. Oddly, the smile looks a little more secure on his face now, and Tsuna feels a little less likely to physically assault him. Apples are clearly magical.

"Uh...ow." Takeshi leans down and picks up the apple. "Good throw for someone who's barely lucid, though!"

"Thanks," says Tsuna.

"So, uh...Kyouko-chan forgot to grab your school stuff on her way out, and the teacher ended up asking me to bring it, since he saw us talking," Takeshi explains. He still sounds unsteady. "So, uh...I brought your books, I guess! I wasn't sure how to, well, get them to you, so sorry for creeping."

"Thanks," Tsuna says again.

"I was really surprised though! Everyone at school always treats you pretty terribly, but..." The smile is on the verge of crumbling again. Tsuna can see the haunted look in Takeshi's eyes like they have spotlights on them. It is 100x worse than Kyouko's guilty tears, and Tsuna cares 100x less, because Takeshi isn't Kyouko. None of his business. "...You really have a lot of friends who care about you, huh."

"Pssh. Two friends." Tsuna snorts.

"That's not true. They're really worried about you, you know? They were kicking up a fuss while we were waiting for you to wake up. It was terrible," Takeshi laughs. "The doctors kept trying to tell them that you were fine, but since it was a person that did it, they were all strung out!"

"Haha...that's nice...I mean...not..." Tsuna blinks blearily at the ceiling. "Bleugh. I don't want t' worry them."

"Ah...yeah." Takeshi rotates the apple in his hands, looking through it more than at it. "Kind of wish I had friends like that."

" _Pssssshhhhhh,_ " Tsuna says, excessive enough for Takeshi to glance up in bewilderment at the sound. "You're popular. No problem."

In the background, Tsuna can hear what must be a nurse demanding  _'EVERYONE OUT_ ' in a voice clear enough to carry through the door.

"I'm not really their friend, I'm their ace," Takeshi says quickly, far too quickly, and it's such a massive break in pace that Tsuna almost doesn't understand what on earth he just said. And then he keeps going! "And my batting average isn't...if I'm not the ace, if I drop even a little, then what's left, right?"

"Ask," Tsuna says wisely.

Takeshi's smile drops completely. But cutely. Cutepletely. _Cubbubbles._

"Huh?"

"Just...ask people...to be your friend. Everyone wants to be your friend. Just do it. Ask."

The smile comes flying back. "Can I be your friend?"

"Go to hell," Tsuna says.

Takeshi's face falls.

"That's going to happen to you  _all the time_. Sucks. But I mean, yes."

The smile comes back again, and Tsuna is tempted to throw another apple at him to make him pick a single damn expression. The flips are giving him a headache. No, he already has a headache.  _Worse_  headache. "Yes to...?"

"Yes. Friend. I don't care. S'good, you're not a bad person."

"Why are you reaching for the apples again?"

Tsuna quickly brings his arm back down. "No reason."

"Hahaha! I don't get you at all!" Takeshi's stupid smile is back, but it's not stupid anymore, it's almost as shining and genuine as Kyouko's, and Tsuna feels his face going inexplicably hot at the sight of it. It's okay when his face goes hot when his mom and Kyouko coo at him because...because he's kind of surprised when people are nice to him, sometimes? It's not okay when it happens when Takeshi does it, though, because he hates Takeshi!

Wait, no he doesn't, they're friends now. Shit. Dammit. Tsuna is so bad at friendship.

"Sorry," Tsuna says after a while. "I don't actually hate you or anything. Friends is good."

"Yeah. Uh, thanks. For the talk. Even though you're pretty, er, out of it."

Tsuna huffs and closes his eyes again.

"I'll just leave these books and stuff here. If you need them. See you...uh...Tsuna."

"See ya, Tacchan," Tsuna mumbles.

Takeshi laughs again, a high chuckle, and somehow, the sound makes the room feel lighter than it was before. Then he's gone too, and Tsuna is alone again, with the open window, and the muffled noises (not as loud as before), and his hospital bed.

Feeling content and absolutely loopy, Tsuna nods off into a peaceful sleep he absolutely deserves, and dreams of never having to deal with one broken rib and a high fever ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Cultural Notes:**  
>  _Chouran_ \- A gakuran (male school uniform) with a long coat.


	7. The Introduction Of A Goal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Chugging a thick beverage, slightly detailed description of bodily harm

Kyouko stands in the kitchen, chewing her lip thoughtfully. Tsuna is healthy and…reasonably stable, as much as he can be when he’s delirious with fever. He was lucid enough to express himself properly, though, and Kyouko is still struggling with what he was expressing; the plan to put him in the Disciplinary Committee worked, sure, but he’s submerging himself in violence, and he’s doing it _on purpose_. Not…not gang violence or criminal activity or bullying or whatever, but competitive fighting.

She’s not a fan of Ryouhei’s boxing, to be honest. She never understood the need to fight to the point he had to find a controlled environment where he was allowed to do it. The rules were always vague to her too, battling in their boxers with mittens on. Is it to avoid grabbing onto their clothes while they fight? Why bother, when they have the mitts to stop that? Why both bandage your hands and put mitts on? Apparently it’s twice as dangerous, because you don’t feel the impact and could end up destroying someone’s jaw because you couldn’t hold back, and in her opinion they should really have softer hand-cushions if that sort of thing is going to happen. Like oven mitts. Why can’t they be reasonable and wear oven mitts instead of giant cushioned red balls of death?

Tsuna’s case is…worse and better at the same time. Kyouko isn’t oblivious so much as very bad at focusing on the right things, but she knows enough to realize that Hibari is not a very positive influence. He’s either the perfect, still calm of an undisturbed pool of water, or tumulus rage like a storm in the middle of the ocean, for _no reason whatsoever_. Kyouko is very worried about Hibari Kyouya, actually. She had him under observation for about a month, and the best she can figure out is that he simply doesn’t have a transition period between calm and rage, and also he likes hitting things.

But _Tsuna_ is the perfect positive influence for _him_. Tsuna is never severe or sharp or jagged, everything about him is muted and quiet and reserved, and even when he’s panicking he’s so very _still_ , and maybe some people don’t like that, but she’s sure Hibari would. Tsuna is so hard on himself; he doesn’t even care enough to be a negative thinker, he just considers failing as something that _is_. She thought that — well, if he could make Hibari…calmer, or at least give him a few stages between ‘collected school authority’ and ‘physical assault’, Tsuna might, perhaps, maybe think of himself a little better? And maybe just be a little happier.

Kyouko had partly succeeded with that, yes, but she also forgot that Hibari really likes hitting things somewhere in there, and now Tsuna is getting into competitive fighting, and for goodness sakes, getting a tonfa to the head is his idea of _fun_. She’s sure if her brother never accidentally punched him in the head, they’d probably get along…Maybe. Tsuna doesn’t seem to remember it happening, but he’s pretty obviously afraid of Ryouhei anyway.

…The point is, why on earth do all the boys she knows feel excited by fighting? At least…at least…at least Yamamoto focuses on something _safe_ , like _baseball_!

At the same time, the entire point of his matches is to _not_ get hit, so it’s better? A little bit better. And when she thinks about it, stabbing her rice, everyone she knows is like that. Mochida has kendou, and Hana has shooting games, and she’s pretty sure that Gokudera boy is so excited about being a tutor that he counts too. Everyone has _something._

Kyouko doesn’t have much of anything.

She pushes her rice away so she can rest her head on the table and squint in aggravation in the general direction of the television, which is talking about how someone had dumped a bunch of garbage on the beaches of the tourist town two miles off from Namimori. She feels irritated. And left behind. Surely there’s something she can do, right?

She looks at her hands. Well, she’s pretty good at binding hands, isn’t she? And she hasn’t been keeping fit.

Kyouko pulls herself up and looks fiercely at her brother, who has been staring at her as she pondered her situation for the past ten minutes. “Onii-san!”

“YES?” Ryouhei roars, startled.

“I want to get fit!” Kyouko balls her fists up.

“YES!” Ryouhei jumps up too.

“And…and drink protein drinks!” She adds, thinking that more exercise means more calories, and she doesn’t trust her sense of self-restraint enough to add another hit to her once-a-month cake day. Or add any more food at all. She likes eating, if she’s given a reason to eat all the time, _who knows when she’ll stop_?

“PROTEIN DRINKS! EXTREME!” Ryouhei dashes into the kitchen to immediately start making one.

“U-Uhm, I didn’t mean right now…” Kyouko calls after him.

Her dad looks calm and distracted, but she can tell he’s trying not to laugh. Her mom doesn’t have quite that level of self-restraint.

“Alright! Drink as much as you can! I’ll time you!” Ryouhei announces as he pours water into the blender.

“O-Okay?”

“I have a stop watch,” her dad says innocently, still holding in his amusement.

“GREAT! Okay, we’ll have an EXTREME protein-drinking speed test!”

“I…huh?”

“It’s so nice you’re getting into your brother’s interests, dear,” her mom giggles, patting her on the arm.

Kyouko huffs and hustles over to the kitchen where she is free from her parent’s radiating humour. She will probably laugh from proximity, and she is _very serious about fitness_. Ryouhei is just…more serious. That’s okay. That’s what makes him such a good big brother!

Her dad throws Ryouhei the stopwatch, and the drink is prepared. Kyouko swallows. Ryouhei holds the glass in one hand and the stopwatch in the other, looking at her with a brilliant onyx intensity that has her sweating. She’s getting performance anxiety over a _beverage_.

She takes it, though, and holds it to her lips. Ryouhei’s thumb hovers over the button, and she nods. The timer is set, and she starts chugging it back. It’s thick, and tastes like…like _everything, all at once_ , like a mental cluster too confused and noisy to make out any one thought, but worse. It’s too thick to drink quickly, too, so she’s forced to to endure it.

She gags a few times, breathes heavily through her nose, and has to stop to digest often, but eventually she drains the cup. Ryouhei stops the timer.

“Two minutes and four seconds!” He declares.

“Wehegh,” Kyouko says.

“GOOD WORK! I’ll show you my EXTREME TRAINING REGIMEN! And the best boxing techniques!” Ryouhei grabs her by the legs and hoists her up into a spinning hug.

“Eh? Boxing? I was just—” Kyouko wobbles and grips his shoulders for stability. He looks up at her, radiating pure happiness, and she…she…

“I…I can’t wait, Onii-san!”

With sudden clarity, she can finally relate to Tsuna’s rising trepidation and mighty fall into resignation that day in front of the Disciplinary Committee room.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Tsuna gets the full story the next day, from Hana.

From what he understands, the day he had gone off to the creepy apartment basement with Hibari, Mochida had confessed to Kyouko and gotten shot down point blank. In front of multiple people. If Mochida is indeed innocent and his story holds true, he had been sulking about the situation, and Goons A and B got him riled up and focused on Tsuna as the reason for his failures. In a surge of insecurity, Mochida decided to confront Tsuna. Then goons A and B break one of Tsuna's ribs without Mochida's knowledge, and Mochida thinks Tsuna chickened out. When news got out, Mochida freaked out and immediately told Hibari what happened. The goons didn't expect that, but were still confident enough to stick around.

The school system requires reasonable proof of misdeed, and can't do a lot on the word of a guilty-looking kid.

Hibari is not the school system.

Afterwords, everyone rushed to see Tsuna. Hayato, who was on his way to visit Tsuna at school during lunch period, ended up being scooped up by Ryouhei to keep him from running into traffic in terrified tutor-ly desperation, and Hana was present for emotional support, and maybe to laugh at Tsuna for being a waste of space. You never know with her.

That leaves only one question.

"Why are you here without Kyouko?" Tsuna asks Hana through a mouthful of fish and rice. Takeshi had made a triumphant return with a ludicrously expensive display boat of sushi, courtesy of his dad, who owns the local sushi restaurant. There's only Hana, Takeshi, and Hayato here at the moment, so they're making good work of it, as hungry teenagers do. His fever has broken overnight, leaving him a little less loopy, but now he has to keep focusing on putting ice packs on his poor, abused chest.

All is ice packs and sushi, and all is good.

"Kyouko suddenly has 'important things' to do after school, and none of my friends want to hang out, so I'm stuck here with you monkeys," Hana sighs. “I can’t believe I’m spending my free time in the hospital. I hate the air here, it’s like jello trying to _crawl into me_ , so gross. Though _you’re_ probably fine, someone could drop you off a building and you’d go ‘this seems appropriate’.”

"Don't talk so disrespectfully to the Boss!" Hayato shouts from behind his veritable mountain of textbooks.

"What's his deal, anyway? What are you a boss of?" Hana quirks her eyebrow at the poor, frazzled teen crouched next to Tsuna. He's marking Tsuna's books and writing new curriculum simultaneously, actually. Tsuna doesn't even know what to do with Hayato, sometimes. (Well, all the time.)

"Him. I'm his employer. He's working as a home tutor," Tsuna explains.

"Alright. Makes sense. You?" She points to Takeshi.

"We're friends!" Takeshi laughs.

"It's a little hard being friends from a hospital bed, but I can confirm it," Tsuna nods.

"Weird, but you got Kyouko, so I'll buy it. What about Hibari, then?"

"Look me in the eye and tell me if you can imagine Hibari-san having friends," Tsuna says grimly.

"Then what the hell is going on with you two? You know before you woke up Kyouko tried to beat him off with a broom when she thought it was his fault you got in trouble?"

Tsuna sits up abruptly, nearly dropping the sushi boat and half of Hayato's books in the process. The sudden movement jolt his ribcage, though, and he buckles instantly. Boy, was that a mistake! "She  _what_?"

"I mean, he hit her and called her a weak little herbivore and everything, it's Hibari, right. But she grabbed a broom because he was  _right there_. Stalking your room. It was _so_  creepy."

"—Oh, yeah. He was in my room when I woke up, wasn't he? What's up with that?"

"I don't know. I kept feeling this...murderous aura. I was too scared to even  _leave_ , he was so intense." Hana takes a piece of sushi with nervous fingers and shoves it in her mouth as if she could chew off the tension. "And then he just set up shop underneath your window. What did you  _do_  to him."

"I didn't do anything! I mean, I'm never on his bad side and we kind of had this really cool epic fight, so..." Tsuna narrows his eyes at the ceiling. "I think he wants to make sure I recover enough to do the fighting thing again, because the last time he told me to take care of myself I got a high fever and a broken rib. I don't think I can be trusted with my own health anymore."

"So if you get up he's going to jump in through the window and beat you down into the bed?"

"Yeah, definitely, that's definitely a thing that will happen," Tsuna chuckles nervously.

"Hahaha! Geez, you really get into a lot of incredible situations!" Takeshi laughs.

"Mm. Mmmmm." Tsuna is imagining Hibari beating him into the bed. It's not a happy thought.

"If he tries anything, I'll beat him right back!" Hayato growls.

"Don't do that, please,  _please_  don't do that," Tsuna wails.

Hana sighs. "Are you sure it's a good idea to be baiting Hibari like that, though? I mean, all he knows is fighting and control. If you're serving yourself up on a platter like that, who knows how he'll interpret it."

"What? How else would he interpret it? A fight's a fight," Tsuna frowns.

Hana adopts a look of cartoonish shock, and holds a hand delicately against her chest. With her other, she grips Tsuna's shoulder and gives him a deeply pitying look. "Oh, honey.  _Honey_."

"I know you're patronizing me. Stop it."

"You're already growing a personality. It's all part of his dark machinations."

"Hibari-san is not the devil."

"Do you _know_?"

Tsuna scowls and looks away. Around him, Takeshi is bowing over the bed in laughter, and Hayato is pretending to be engaged in his study-teachings. It suddenly strikes him how weird it feels to be surrounded by people he likes. Mostly it's just...Kyouko. Literally just Kyouko. Kyouko has been his only real friend since they were kids. Since forever.

(Ryouhei would probably be his second friend if Ryouhei didn't terrify Tsuna so much.)

Now the annoying guy is his friend, his live-in tutor is his friend,  _Hana_  is... _probably_ his friend. His social circle has exploded in size this month. Is this what Takeshi and his mom, meant, when they were talking about all the people he's collected? He's sure there are plenty of people at school who doesn't have as many good friends as he does right now, at this moment.

It doesn't feel great to think about, for some reason, but it’s nice to experience.

Eventually, Takeshi has to go double down on baseball practice again, Hayato has to go submit his teaching masterpiece to Koyama, and Hana has to go be normal and not hang out with monkeys or something, she doesn't really specify. After his friends leave, his mother drops by to chat about her day, followed by his doctor, who informs him that his chest is going to take roughly three or so weeks to heal, and he should focus on light, non-strenuous activity and breathing exercises. His health will improve faster if he's up and running about, so he'll be released from the hospital on Monday.

That leaves Tsuna to wonder if Hibari will interpret this as an open invitation to some 'light exercise' at school, and then to chastise himself for wondering, of  _course_  Hibari would dismiss a broken rib. As long as Tsuna has enough health and vigour to hold up over a decently long fighting session, it may as well be a papercut for all he cares. All Tsuna can do is keep his spine straight and his breathing steady, when the time comes. He's not sure how he'll fare without the ability to twist his torso around, but...well, Hibari's not going to care about handicaps, so  _what can he do_.

The door slams open.

Hibari Kyouya stands there, as if he had been summoned by Tsuna's internal complaining.

Hana's 'Hibari is the devil' theory rapidly gaining traction, now.

He doesn't say anything for a moment, carefully observing Tsuna on the bed, and then the half-finished sushi boat on his lap. He doesn't have the godlike presence Tsuna noted often before, or the demonlike presence Hana described only a little while ago. He feels pretty normal, honestly. Tsuna is oddly reminded of that moment he saw Hibari going through paperwork and smiling. He has no idea why it's so hard to think Hibari is a human being, but at least there's anchor points like these ones to help him along.

Hibari approaches Tsuna.

"Monday," he declares.

Then he takes four pieces of sushi, an accommodating collection of ginger, and leaves.

Tsuna opens his mouth. Closes it. Makes a guttural animal-like noise at the back of his throat and throws his head back into his pillow.

" _RUDE._ "

  
  


* * *

 

 

 Hayato is anxious. 

The acquisition of the school is easier than expected; only one of the teachers could possibly hope to stop him, and he's an easily bribed weirdo with twigs in his hair that usually can't be bothered. There seems to be some sort of instability in the wake of the defeat of the previous boss, 'Udo', who was defeated by the city's Big Boss, Hibari Kyouya (and Hayato pays special mind to his name, 'skylark', because he's seen that  _bird_  and that  _pattern_  before). As far as he can tell, Udo was the closest thing to Hibari Kyouya anyone's ever gotten, and now he's wiped out and there's nothing but Hayato to show for it. Most of them are happy to get a second chance at power, but there's a lot who want to squash him and fill the vacuum themselves. It's a stressful school life, here.

But that's not why he's anxious. He's anxious because Tsuna is in the hospital.

He had assumed Tsuna had some base level of competence in every field, besides sloppy studies, but maybe that was just him being willfully ignorant. He had hints. The way Tsuna automatically went submissive when he lost power in the conversation. The way he didn't fight at all when he brought him to the school. The way he went down like a sack of potatoes when Hayato punched him for all that ramen.

He may have to just accept that Tsuna is, at the moment, a fragile, emotionally vulnerable little dweeb with no useful skills to protect him from violence, manipulation, or someone even a little skilled in being really mean. (Excluding Hana, who seems to be hostile purely out of habit.)

 _Unacceptable_.

His initial plan was to teach the students of Koyama reasonable mafia-like skills, so they can hold their own when they invariably get sucked into the black hole of the Underworld's entry level criminal network, but now he thinks he might have to take a different approach, one that promotes an environment where Tsuna will hopefully _not die_.

He doesn't want to focus on training up the Koyama students anymore. He wants to focus on  _reforming_  them. Setting a good example. Maybe very aggressive sports teams, to help people handle their violent tendencies in healthy ways. But he wants them to be good. He wants people to trust Koyama students. He wants people to give them a chance. He wants to give them what he never had. 

So that's why he's breaking into the records room to illegally investigate the grades of the entire student body.

The school doesn't have the budget to do it digitally, horrifyingly. The school doesn't even  _own_  computers. He'll have to figure out a way around that; any funding they get in this school year will probably go towards making the school look less like a shithole, after all. As far as he is aware, the school board makes a truly staggering effort to pretend Koyama doesn't exist, and the principal is never in the school if he can help it. 

Oh well. All the easier to snoop.

What he finds isn't encouraging; most of the students are boasting absolutely horrific grades. The average score is around Tsuna's level, in fact. It makes it easier to pick up what they're getting wrong and help them grow and improve, but still.  _Horrible_.  

Things are not looking good, up until he gets to the top drawer of the first-year's cabinet, containing the vowel-grouped files. At the very back, with the 'O's, he finds a single file of needle-in-a-haystack rarity. 

The student ID picture depicts a tidy, stringy-looking brunette boy with huge brown sanpaku eyes that are firmly rooted off-camera in a near glare. He doesn't look any different than the rest of the students he's seen both face-to-face and in these profiles, but his actual file, including his test scores and report cards from elementary school, are  _bullshit genius_. Top-ranking, all 100s, best in his class since kindergarten bullshit genius. Either he's somehow managed to avoid hitting an educational plateau for  _years_ , or he studies way too hard for his own good. Either way, Hayato likes him.

He takes a few photos of the file, puts everything back into its place, and sneaks back out into the hall. He looks around for any witnesses, and when he's sure the coast is clear, rushes out to the teacher's lounge. 

School has already ended, and there aren't any clubs that last until this hour, so the only students lingering around are delinquents and people who have a visceral need to not be at home. Consequently, the door to the teacher's lounge is locked tight, only to open to polite knocking and a tangible request.

Hayato kicks the door in.

"You owe me a thousand," that twiggy-haired bastard Yamazaki says to the science teacher, who is squinting hatefully at Hayato. Hayato ignores her. 

"Shut up and listen. I'm expanding the student council, and I've found someone I want to recruit."

"Typically members of the student council are voted in," Science Teacher points out.

"This is all part of my reformation plan! I'm making your school a better place, so be proud!" Hayato spits back.  _So disrespectful_. "Anyway, Oogawa Miki. Smartest kid I've found. Where can I find him?"

Yamazaki pauses in the middle of tossing a scrunched up paper wad into the trash, actually looking directly at Hayato. His face is still, like he’s thinking very hard about something, and his fingers tap along the round of his paper ball. He sure as shit better be trying to remember Oogawa’s personal details, or Hayato is going to beat it out of him.

“…You won’t find him at school," Yamazaki finally says. "He's been playing truant for months now. Only ever see him taking tests, in the staff room. Does all his homework from home."

"Shit," Hayato hisses under his breath. He stops to think. Oogawa could have any number of reasons to avoid coming to school, but it might be the harsh, unwelcome environment from all those piss-ant delinquents. Maybe he can win him over with his reformation plan. Yes, that's bound to work! He could even use Tsuna's crafty manipulative support techniques to get him to  _want_  to come.

A shiver runs down his spine. Hayato. Being the boss of a group. He never would have imagined this when he was younger, homeless, fighting tooth and nail to get so much as glanced at. And all because Tsuna wanted to help him, a stranger, keep his job! This is the best he’s gotten in _years_.

"...Give his address," Hayato breathes.

"What? _No_ ," says Science Teacher.

"What do I get if I give it to you?" Says Yamazaki.

Hayato smirks and puts his hands in his pockets, chin tilted up imperiously. He doesn't light a cigarette. Lately, it feels like he doesn't need to. 

"Name the price."

  
  


* * *

 

 

Takeshi is, as he has made incredibly clear ever since he was seven, _absurdly strong_.

Not in terms of throwing a punch or lifting things, which would be pretty useful, though he’s decent enough at that. He’s strong with throwing. He’s so strong that he can pitch balls harder than the most ruthless setting on the baseball machine. He’s so strong that he threw a ball once and it _knocked the bat out of the batter’s hands_. His power as an ace lies in the fact that he has the superhuman ability to toss things with the optimum level of ferocity and upper body strength. He’s very proud of it. He refuses to throw any lighter, because it might atrophy or something, and he has worked hard to perform pitches this heavy.

He thought that would be enough, but unfortunately, that’s not how baseball works. You have to be able to do more than just throw a nasty pitch. He has to be able to use a baseball bat too, and while long tools are part of the collection of ‘items that he can cause wanton destruction with’, being able to hit a ball as a hard as a major league player doesn’t matter much in the long run if you _keep missing_.

He thought it would be enough if he pitches really good and when he hits the ball he _hits_ it, but that doesn’t seem to matter. The rest of his team constantly treat the deficit as a failure. And he can see that as hard as his pitches are, they’re still hittable if you can tolerate the impact and react fast enough, and that means that the Namimori Middle School team is only just barely a cut above. It wouldn’t be great until he got his batting average up.

He wouldn’t be great until he got his batting average up.

He wouldn’t have anyone who thinks he’s great unless he got his batting average up.

Tension winds up in his core at the thought, but he lets it relax at the thought of Tsuna, his _friend,_ small and brittle (why the heck are his limbs so thin, he feels like he should have noticed he had limbs that thin) and half out of his mind on the hospital bed. The nerves and stress that built up inside him dissipate, so he does his best to not think about what would happen when they didn’t, because he still has the faded memory of something small and black and cold and cruel wound around his heart, curled up and sleeping as long as he doesn’t think about it.

Tsuna probably doesn’t even know the rules to baseball. Takeshi likes that. Tsuna probably doesn’t even like him all that much. Takeshi…somehow likes that too. He’s not going to interrogate that.

Takeshi likes the people that unexpectedly clustered into the hospital room too! Hibari is…very very scary, but interesting! Mochida is…well…he’s serious about his sport, and it’s kendou, just like his dad! He’s seen his dad practice kendou, it was pretty cool. He hasn’t shown up since Hibari dragged him there, though, so Takeshi can probably forget he exists. Kyouko is a great person that always knows exactly what people are feeling; she would have to, to get a read on a person like Tsuna, who has literally only expressed shock and fear in the entire semester. Everything else is this really disturbing resting face that sort of looks like he’s contemplating some dark, dark thoughts. Murder thoughts.

Takeshi reminds himself he likes Tsuna now. Because they’re friends.

Hana is fun! He likes Hana. Hana likes him, in a distant, bland, classmate sort of way, and she makes an effort to ignore him, because he’s too childish or something? But Takeshi likes her! One time she borrowed his baseball bat to destroy someone else’s shooting game stall during the last summer festival. The Committee hadn’t even come around to collect the tax yet. Her father and Kyouko’s brother joined in. It was really funny.

Sasagawa Ryouhei is also fun! He’s competitive in the same way Takeshi is competitive, but actually expresses it. Takeshi would be way to embarrassed to scream like that, but that doesn’t stop him from hollering. Takeshi didn’t actually go to the same elementary school as everyone else, but he still knew about Ryouhei, because the guy has a set of lungs on him. He’s got a lot of energy. It’s fun! Takeshi would probably never approach him without a buffer because Ryouhei actually kind of weirds him out, but fun! And he cares about his sister a lot, which is sweet.

And then there is the one who is twice as shouty and ten times as angry as Ryouhei, who Takeshi already forgot the name of, but still likes on principle. Unlike Hana’s loud disgust or Ryouhei’s excitement, which are reactionary, this guy seems to be begging for an excuse to rage at something. He’s also weirdly intense? Like, really intense? Like, his dad telling Takeshi to stop staring at him while he’s working because it’s unsettling him and his teammates telling him to ‘chill a little’ intense? He smells like gunpowder too. Who are you, mysterious glaring gunpowder tutor. _Takeshi wants to know._

He cares about Tsuna a lot though, even if he keeps snipping at him, and also treating him like a CEO or something. They all do. They all care about Tsuna a lot, and they’re his friends, and it looks like the kind of setting that had been festering inside Takeshi’s fantasies, empty with the lack of understanding of what he was looking for.

Clearly, Takeshi has to befriend all of them.

But he is actually secretly social awkward, as it turns out, because the moment visiting time was over, he ended up sort of…drifting away, out of everyone’s gaze, as invisible and irrelevant as he was when he drifted in. He is not entirely certain everyone even knew he was there. Maybe Kyouko, because she is hyperaware of every single person in her immediate proximity, and Hana, because she’s always analyzing people to see how much they deserve to speak to her, but otherwise, probably not. He brought the sushi boat for round two, but that didn’t work great either, beyond the fact everyone knows his dad makes sushi now.

He’s supposed to be good at socializing. He’s _outgoing_. His teachers specifically pointed it out, even. He shouldn’t be this much of a mess.

So he’s turning to the one thing he knows best; baseball.

He has it all planned out. He’ll be Tsuna’s friend, and get used to everybody, and maybe talk to them instead of drifting away or laughing in the background like a live studio audience. And then, during the summer tournament, he’ll have an opportunity to start a conversation after each game, and he’ll look really cool too. There’ll be conversation topics. He’s always outgoing when it comes to baseball. Maybe he just messed up because he wasn’t talking to them about baseball.

That being said, he needs to get his batting average up to…well, average. What kind of baseball ace misses all the time?

It’s the weekend, so he goes to the grounds early to practice with his team, and when his team isn’t around to practice with anymore, he goes home and pulls out the ball machine he had saved up for that isn’t quite as powerful as his favourite one at school but is still usable, and starts in on that. He’s pure focus. His dad only stops in the backyard to shake his head and note that there isn’t really enough room for a good practice session. He’s right, but the shorter distance feels like it might train his instincts up better.

He practices for hours. This was probably a mistake.

The restaurant closes, and he continues on, even when his dad tells him he ought to stop now, it’s getting late, even when the summer sun sets, even when it’s getting cold and his arms and hands are numb beyond belief. He’s determined to push his limits. He’s determined to push his body to the breaking point to get what he wants.

(He realizes, all too late, that that is a great way to never get what you want, forever.)

The machine fires a baseball and he doesn’t hit it, but the weight of the bat pulls at his muscle and something _tears_. He can feel flesh separating under his skin, and jolt of pain, and he yelps and immediately cradles it to protect it from any further damage, but he’s not paying attention to the world around him and the machine spits out another baseball, and it fires directly into his injued arm, at the exact worst possible angle. It shouldn’t be possible, because it’s not even as powerful as the one at school, and kids get pelted by that one all the time, but that’s angles for you.

He _hears_ the bone break.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Cultural Notes:**  
>  _Groupings/vowel order_ \- The Japanese alphabet is typically grouped in a sequence of 'A-I-U-E-O' (as opposed to the Western A-E-I-O-U), sorted by consonant. (E.G. Ka-Ki-Ku-Ke-Ko, Ta-Chi-Tsu-Te-To, etc etc). The file cabinets are sorted by this alphabet system, so 'Oogawa' is at the very back of the first section.
> 
>  _Sanpaku eyes_ \- Sanpaku eyes are a phenomenon where the sclera is visible at three points around the iris - on the left, on the right, and either on top or on the bottom. Sanpaku eyes are said to indicate a type of imbalance within a person. When it's below the iris (like Miki's are), it's usually a sign of ailment or misfortune. When it's above the iris, it indicates internal mental imbalances and disordered thinking. (In this case, combined with the monolid eyes, it just makes Miki look like he's glaring.)


	8. The Introduction Of A Fantasy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Suicidal and self-destructive fantasies, blatant symptoms of long-term neglect and (school-centric) abuse.

Yamazaki Kunihiro is not allowed to be in their house.

…But he showed up outside last night.

Oogawa Miki stares at his bedroom ceiling the following morning and tells himself a second time for good measure: Yamazaki Kunihiro is not allowed to be in their house. He was being cruel and unfair and now he’s banned forever, and Miki is going to get up and he’s _not_ going to find a head of apple-red hair sticking out of his closet.

He gets up. There is no one in his closet.

Miki steps around crinkled pieces of paper covered with wild calligraphy strokes and goes downstairs. His mom is there, head down on the table.

“Mom, uncle was outside our house last night.”

“He can get a therapist,” she mumbles.

“Oh,” Miki mutters, suddenly reminded the world doesn’t revolve around him, actually. “Oh, oh no, do you think something happened?”

“It’s none of your business if something happened, you’re _thirteen years old_. And aren’t you still mad at him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He’s kind of horrifying, but not to Miki. “I mean…I’d rather not go back to school…I guess I-I don’t, uhm, hate him.”

“ _I’d_ still be mad at him.” His mom props her head up on one hand. She looks exhausted, and Miki makes a face. Why does she have to stay up until morning like this? Miki doesn’t go to school. She’s not missing anything.

“A-Aren’t you always mad at him, though?” Miki fills the coffee machine up.

“I don’t knowwww. I’m mad at my whole family _all the time_ , how am I supposed to differentiate the two?” She throws her head back. “God I’m tired.”

“Go to…please get to bed. You have work in…” Miki glances at the clock. “five hours.”

“Five hours is plenty of sleep.”

“No, uh, it’s really not?” It’s _adequate_ sleep, but only going to bed when you’re sleep-deprived is seriously not healthy.

“Your father knows what I’m talking about.”

“Dad keeps regular hours and goes to bed when he gets drowsy, like a normal person.”

She fake gasps. “I’m _so_ normal.”

The coffee machine gurgles. Miki looks at her for a moment, then he turns around to fish eggs out of the fridge without saying anything at all.

When breakfast is done — dad won’t be home for an hour or two, sunrise is his favourite time to do landscapes — and his mom is finally encouraged to sleep, Miki goes into the rec room and places the paintbrush to the paper and tries to tell himself, in firm mental words, that he can’t hesitate.

Miki is very stable. He has a good dynamic with his parents and talks to them often. He is not a hikikomori. He leaves the house and goes to the nearby convenience store and buys things, and it feels good. It’s just school that bothers him. He could get a part-time job if he wanted. It’s just school that bothers him. He is a good son. He prefers painting shodou calligraphy to playing videogames or reading manga. He is definitely, absolutely stable.

The outside world isn’t scary. He goes outside. He buys things at the convenience store.

If he hesitates, the shodou ends up being ugly. He needs zen in order for it to work, and being afraid means it won’t work. The outside world is not scary. If he goes to the convenience store today, he will not see anyone with red hair. He will go out to the convenience store today. He will show one person a piece of his calligraphy. He will show them he is not scared.

The brush is pulled down.

Someone knocks at the door, and Miki screams and jerks the brush across two tatami mats and falls over.

He was wrong he was wrong they’ve come to get him they’re here and they’re going to take him away and he was wrong about the fear it’s scary and he can’t deal with this, no _no no no no-_

“Open up! It’s, uh, a concerned peer or whatever!” An unfamiliar voice hollers from outside. It doesn’t sound like someone in their mid-twenties. Miki stares after it and tries not to panic any more than he already has. _Who the hell is that_.

He tip-toes into the kitchen, and the stranger hammers the door again. Mom is going to wake up if this keeps up. Miki looks around, and quickly grabs a broom; it’s the best he can manage right now. He’s never hit anyone before — his inability to assert himself is why Yamazaki took it upon himself to be cruel and unfair to others (and maybe him, yes, to him, he has to assert himself, it’s unfair to _him_ ) — but he’s scared enough to try.

Slowly, he reaches out, grips the door handle, and turns it.

A teenage boy _explodes_ into his house, waving papers too wildly for Miki to see what they say. “EXPLAIN!”

“ _NOOO!”_ Miki shrieks, and whacks the teen in the face with the broom.

“No— stop— wha— st— _the fuck is wrong with you, cut it out_ ,” the teen barks. He bats the broom out of Miki’s hands. Now that Miki can get a good look at him, he’s wearing a flashy, ratty-looking graphic T-shirt and his hair is slicked back. This _has_ to be a delinquent, which is worse than a stranger.

“L-Leave me alone! I don’t have to answer to you!” Miki wails, going for the broom again.

The delinquent slams the heel of his leather combat boot onto the broom and snaps it clean in half. Miki gapes at it. “Enough of that, you little twerp, I’m here on business.”

“D-D-Did Yamazaki send you?”

“No, but I had to bribe him for your address, the rat bastard. What kind of self-respecting teacher of a load of baby-ass criminals won’t just _give you things_? Is he looking down on me? Fucking honestly.” He looks around. “Nice house, by the way.”

“Thank you. Please leave?”

“No.” He kicks off his boots and strolls right in. Miki whimpers and scrambles after him on his hands and knees.

“What do you want? I’ll wake up my mom, and she’ll beat you up if you try anything! She knows how to kill people!”

“So do I, totally irrelevant. Look.” The delinquent collapses at the table and throws the papers he was waving on top. He’s lost all bitterness, instead looking soft and excitable. Miki has never known this to be a good thing, and he remains cowering and threatened. “I’m Gokudera Hayato, the new student council president. I blew up all the delinquents in the school and now I own them. _However,_ I’m not some evil shit-for-brains lording over his underlings and letting them wag their guns around, so—”

“ _They had guns?”_

“Yeah, and then I blew them up. You even listening? So _however_ _and shit_ , I’m not like, some delinquent. I’m a home tutor. I test at university level, according to sources. So I like kids with good grades, you know? I’m here to ask, _explain this_.” He taps the papers insistently.

Miki peers over them. It’s his student record. His elementary school grades are listed there. “O-Oh.”

“Listen, I have to teach every futureless asshole in the school to be both self-sufficient in a world that can and _will_ suck them in while also teaching them to be decent goddamn people who won’t beat up my boss, who, and I’m sorry I have to say these words, is a pathetic dumbass in desperate of guidance every moment he sucks air, so I need role models, and I’ve never met a role model as good as a kid that has _never_ gotten a grade below perfect.”

Miki shrinks away, flushing at the indirect praise. “B-B-But why, uhm, why does that mean, you have to break into my house?”

“I didn’t break in, dumbass, I was attacked and rightly assumed you weren’t ready for a conversation unless I look like I wanted to talk. Look. I’m sitting down. You feel the need to hit me now? You’re speaking words. _You know I’m right_.”

Gokudera doesn’t look like he knows he’s right. He looks angry and embarrassed. Maybe he didn’t mean to break into Miki’s house. Miki also doesn’t mean to do a lot of awful things; this can be relatable.

“…Do I really seem like a role model to you?” He mumbles, clutching his hands to his chest.

“I…I mean, I dunno. Tell me how you got these grades, and I’ll tell you, I guess.” Gokudera is even more embarrassed. It makes it feel genuine and real and not a lie meant to coax him out of the house when he doesn’t want to go.

Miki clenches his teeth as hard as he can and tries to avoid eye contact. The outside world is not scary. This is what delinquents look like now. Not everything is a conspiracy. This is okay. The world is not scary. The world is not scary. Gokudera Hayato is not scary. This is fine. Miki is stable. No one is manipulating him.

“I…Okay.”

This is going to be fine.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Tsuna is in the hospital for an extra two days, on account of him experiencing some sort of heavy, bone-deep fatigue that is spooking the doctors, which gives Kyouko plenty of time to Plot.

People don’t think she’s capable of Plotting, which is patently ridiculous. She Plots all the time. How could she be in Leadership without getting into Plots? Do they realize how impossible elementary-schoolers are to organize? Middle-schoolers are even _worse_. Sure, she has a very hard time getting angry, and she’s terrified of hurting people’s feelings, but Plots, they’re easy. She’s good at them. She’s gotten really popular thanks to her Plots, which was…actually very unintentional, admittedly, but that just means she’s got a _talent_.

So her Plot for now is this; Tsuna is clearly not getting anything out of the Disciplinary Committee besides those dodge-match things. She’s seen Ryouhei. If she just leaves Tsuna with Hibari, Tsuna is going to base all his happiness on those matches, which entirely defeats the point of setting their friendship up to begin with. Tsuna will just be reinforcing Hibari’s terrible behaviour and getting himself hurt. He needs a support network of people who care about him! So far, if she counts, that’s her, his mom, hopefully Hana, theoretically Ryouhei, _definitely_ that Gokudera boy…apparently Yamamoto? And then Mochida, who doesn’t get along with him at all, and Hibari, who is ruining everything with his… _shenanigans_.

Anyway, that’s more people than she started with, so it works. Hana is really warming up to him, though she's still very wary and distrustful; while Hana is very good at reading personalities, she's not very good at reading people, so really solid poker faces scare her. That's okay. Tsuna is getting a little more relaxed lately, and he's always happy to engage her, so Hana will figure him out eventually. Then they can be the kind of friends who elbow and shove each other good-naturedly! Kyouko _knows_ _it._

So the main idea is that she needs to expose Tsuna to all these friends at length. That, regrettably, means she can’t come, because whenever Tsuna gets nervous or sulky he hovers around her, waiting for her to scoop him back up again. She can’t be his crutch. He needs to be more _independent_.

It also means that they’re going to have to skip school.

Hibari isn’t going to like it, but Tsuna is going to be out of the hospital on Monday, and an entire school week is more than enough time for the opportunity of _friendship_ to pass. She’ll…she’ll think of something. Hibari _really_ isn’t going to like it, though. If she told him her Plot, he’d be so angry. He likes Tsuna a lot! Well, as much as he can like someone who isn’t Kusakabe, anyway (and boy golly does he like Kusakabe a _lot_ ), but he has a _positive impression_ of Tsuna, and if Tsuna were to be taken away, he’d be really mad! So she can’t tell him.

Clearly, they have to kidnap Tsuna.

For this, she needs assistance. Non-suspicious targets. Ryouhei, for example, hasn’t talked to Tsuna since he punched him in the face in fourth year because he is wracked with guilt and he can’t bring it up because Tsuna doesn’t remember it. If he went missing, it would not be suspicious. Then there’s Hana. That _would_ be suspicious, but Kyouko needs her to get used to Tsuna anyway, so she’s going. Then Tsuna’s new friend, Yamamoto, who was _conveniently_ absent during practice yesterday, meaning he can be _conveniently_ absent for a few more days, and Gokudera, who doesn’t even go to Namimiddle and may actually attempt to fight her if she tries to ship Tsuna off without him.

She starts out with the person most likely to respond to her plan; Yamamoto.

They’re both people who have the inherent ability to get along with just about anyone, so their paths cross pretty often. They’re also the kind of people who are more used to having an orbiting system of positive acquaintances than actual close friends, so they don’t actually interact on an intimate level. Unlike Kyouko, though, he doesn’t have anyone he really holds close, so she thinks he would appreciate an excuse to stalk Tsuna for two days or more.

She cheerfully makes her way to the Takesushi restaurant, where Hana says that Yamamoto lives. There is, in fact, a second level attached to the restaurant! There’s a staircase leading up to it on the side of the building, and she quickly scales it and knocks politely on the door.

The restaurant is open, so Yamamoto is the one to answer it, and Kyouko winces when she sees him. He’s _miserable_. The extent of his terrible mood permeates the house beyond like a miasma, and he looks at her with an unfocused, worn smile.

“Uh, hey,” Yamamoto says weakly.

“We’re going to kidnap Tsuna,” Kyouko blurts.

He blinks, bewildered. “You’re…what?”

“I mean, I’m going to take him out of school for a little while. He’s been really stressed lately, and I’m worried he’s going to get too dependent on Hibari hitting him and me helping him, I’d rather him settle down somewhere where he can relax! So I’m going to take him out without telling Hibari.” She bows her head in embarrassment. “Er…you can help, can’t you?”

Yamamoto looks at her with both perfect blankness and raging, manic intensity that Kyouko doesn’t quite understand. He nods slowly. “I don’t see why not.”

“Okay, I’m going to go to Koyama Middle to talk to Gokudera-san! You should come!”

 _That_ gets him in a good mood. “The tutor?”

“Yeah! He’s really invested in Tsuna’s safety and stuff. And he scares me, so I don’t want to make him upset.”

“Fair. Give me a second!” Yamamoto steps back out of the doorway to take his coat and grab his shoes. Kyouko peers inside to watch, but flinches when she actually sees his full form. His arm, which was hidden by the door before, is bandaged and held up by a sling, still a pristine white. He was absent from practice Saturday, which means—

“Y…Yamamoto-kun, your…”

“Haha! It’s fine!” It is most certainly _not fine_. “I mean, I won’t be able to do anything for the last game of the semester — I actually _broke_ it, can you believe it, who breaks their arm from a ball machine — but hey, kidnapping a friend is probably better than moping around the house, right?”

She takes a step back when he comes up to the doorway again. It’s not just manic intensity, it’s borderline hysteria. She reaches out to touch his shoulder, but he doesn’t react to it. Kyouko feels her gut clench as she’s overwhelmed with the sensation that Yamamoto is half a breath away from unleashing a screaming black _something_. She’s not sure she could put it to words, or even call it an _emotion_ at all. It’s like Tsuna’s heart turned inside-out, and it’s making cold sweat form on the nape of her neck.

Then Yamamoto stops smiling, and looks sadly at his arm. “I’m only a first year. It’s not like I’m missing the Koushien or anything.”

The absolute crushing pressure eases back, and he doesn’t just look sad. He is sad. He’s so terribly sad. Now Kyouko is sad.

She rubs his arm as he passes her. “I’m sure you’ll find something neat to do on vacation.”

“Yeah! Probably. So when is this vacation? Over summer? Weekend?”

“Oh, no, that’s why we can’t tell Hibari. We’ll be skipping school. Or you will, because I can’t come.”

“That’s- but I—” He frowns, but then looks at his arm, and he realizes that it is, in fact, broken. As in, he can’t attend practice anymore. “…Oh. Huh. Well, okay.”

“Anyway, Gokudera-san is probably going to be at Koyama for a while. If you want to go do something first, or…”

“Nah, it’s fine! I’ve been interested in talking to him anyway,” Yamamoto grins.

“Okay…” Kyouko nods hesitantly. Reading moods, she’s good at that. Doing anything about those moods? _Helpless_.

Yamamoto pokes his head in the restaurant to tell his dad he’s ‘hanging out with a friend’, and he shoots her a quick, if slightly tired, smile. She smiles back. She can’t feel the tiny black something anymore, but it’s still making her skin crawl, and filling her with a glorious purpose.

It felt like Tsuna’s heart turned inside-out, which means if Tsuna is miserable for long enough, he’s going to start oozing _that_. Which is, of course, unacceptable. Kyouko clenches her fists. If Gokudera won’t let her take Tsuna on a vacation, _she’ll_ fight _him_.

  
  


* * *

 

Kyouko is pretty urgent when she needs to be, Takeshi thinks as she delicately hustles down the halls and explodes into the student council room. She had always seemed kinda mild to him, before. Maybe he’s not as good at reading people as he thought he was.

A student shrieks as she barges in, but she manages to look at him even before he startles, which is pretty impressive considering he was doing it in reaction to her sudden presence. She should have been just as oblivious to him as he was of her, but she just seems to have a people radar sometimes. Unsettling. Very emotionally validating, and Takeshi likes being around it, but also, unsettling.

The shrieking boy is on the taller side, but waifish, and he wears Koyama’s chouran. He’s pasted himself against the wall in sheer terror, and his huge brown eyes are wide and teary. His hair is a poorly-cut mess of black spikes sticking up at odd angles. He’s clutching a bunch of papers to his chest like he’s trying to absorb them.

“Fuck’s sake, Miki, you can’t keep screaming every time someone comes in,” Gunpowder Tutor Gokudera yells from his position at the desk at the back of the room. He’s leaning back with his legs resting on the desk, a bunch of books splayed out over his lap. He really doesn’t know the meaning of holding back, does he? Takeshi doesn’t think he’s studied as much in his entire life as Gokudera is studying in the span of three days.

The student, Miki, just tears up even more. “The last one had a _gun_!”

_Woah!_

“Don’t be such a baby. You have a weapon.”

Miki leans over and picks up a very heavy-looking flashlight delicately from the floor. He waves it around like his wrist is made of jello. Takeshi observes that he still hasn’t broken eye contact with Kyouko yet. “But…”

“But nothing. Learn how to use it.”

Miki flops the flashlight around helplessly while Gokudera turns to look at Kyouko, who has yet to break eye contact with Miki.

“The hell are you doing here, anyway?”

Kyouko doesn’t say anything. She hums noncommittally and continues staring at Miki. Okay then!

“We want to take Tsuna out on a vacation, help him destress and stuff,” Takeshi explains. “We figured you wanted in. Right Kyouko?”

Kyouko slowly circles Miki and sits down on the nearest chair, not even blinking. Miki appears to be falling into a trance too, now. That sure is…possibly abnormal? Takeshi doesn’t know. He doesn’t spend a whole lot of time with girls. Well. He’s dated at least two, but not for long. Maybe this is how they make friends with strange boys.

Or not. Gokudera is squinting at her and mouthing _‘what the fuck’._ Okay, so that _is_ weird. Haha. What the heck.

“And we were going to take him to…” Takeshi prompts.

Kyouko barely twitches, but she manages to hum a distant, distracted “Miyazawa.”

“Oh! Yeah, I get it now.” Takeshi turns back to Gokudera. “It was on the news! There was a bunch of garbage all over the beach. It’s pretty much a landfill right now. Which is, you know, not good for a beachside tourist town.”

“So we’re going to clean up the garbage?” Gokudera asks.

Takeshi grins and shrugs.

Miki is on the floor now, and he’s completely slack, in contrast to Kyouko’s rigid stillness. Takeshi isn’t sure if he’s supposed to be ignoring this or not.

“Hm. Sounds like a good character building exercise. But _I_ have an entire school to run,” the world’s most ambitious tutor dismisses.

“What if you brought the school?” Takeshi suggests, mostly as a joke.

“The fuck do you mean, _bring the school_ ,” Gokudera says, but it escapes his mouth before his face takes on a very considering shade. “…Huh.”

“…Huh?” Takeshi cocks his head.

“Yeah…YEAH!” Gokudera leaps to his feet and folds his arms triumphantly, smirking down at the three other students. “Alright, we’re going to renovate the _shit_ out of Miyazawa. This will be Koyama’s first reputable act as a school reborn! Boss will be proud! And actually doing something while he’s recovering. Kid’s gonna get himself killed one of these days.”

Takeshi has no idea what’s going on, but that was still technically a positive answer, so he smiles and goes “great!”

Miki’s nose is bleeding now. He feels he should probably be worried about this? Kyouko is leaning forward, eyes wide, not blinking, and completely blank-faced. Gokudera circles around his desk and stops in front of the two, glaring curiously at them. Takeshi discreetly leans in to sniff while he has the chance, and gets a thick musk of cigarette smoke today. Takeshi is a little disappointed; he had hoped he would be able to smell gunpowder on him again, and what kind, and in what amount, so that he could finally put one of the totally random skills he learned from his dad to use.

He’s not actually sure what he’d do with the information of Gokudera’s exact gunpowder-handling habits, but at least it would be something. Gokudera is a really weird, really interesting guy. Didn’t he just say that he _runs the school_? Takeshi desperately wants to know more on this, but it would probably be awkward to ask.

Gokudera suddenly snaps his head to glare at Takeshi. “Are you…are you _sniffing_ me?”

…Whoops!

Takeshi says “ahaha of course not” and takes a few steps back.

Miki bobs in place, and Kyouko blinks and shakes her head, snapping out of…whatever the heck that was. Suddenly, it feels like all the air in the room has suddenly returned, like a held breath whooshing out all at once, even though Takeshi doesn’t remember any mounting tension. It’s easier to breathe, at any rate. Kyouko squints up at Takeshi and Gokudera, like her eyes are adjusting to the light. “Uhm, so that’s a yes…?”

“Yeah it’s a…what the shit,” Gokudera marches over and grabs Miki by the skull so he can tilt his head back and inspect his blown pupils and bleeding nose. “What is this. _What is this._ I only just got this kid this Friday, and you’re using some kinda fuckin’ psychic mind powers on him?”

Kyouko gasps, horrified and primly offended. “I would _never_. Anyway, he won.”

Gokudera gives her a weird look. “…Yeah, alright. So, Monday morning?”

“Yep!” Kyouko gets up, and wobbles violently. Takeshi’s hand snaps out to steady her, and she grabs onto it for a second before waddling out the door like she’s taken a clean hit to the head. Probably something else he should worry about.

Gokudera leans in close to Takeshi and whispers “watch out for her. She’s probably an undercover UMA. I can _taste it_.”

Takeshi smiles blandly, nods, and says “sure thing, thanks for the help.”

He quickly leaves Gokudera mopping Miki’s face and cussing words of comfort under his breath and hurries after Kyouko at a half-jog. He can’t see her at first, until he comes to the stairwell and sees her curled up against the wall, shaking and breathing heavily.

“Kyouko-chan? You okay?” He rushes down three steps at a time and pays for it with his balance being thrown, and he trips over the remaining ten steps. He almost reaches out to grab something to support himself, but then he remembers his arm is broken, and that it’s all bound up in a sling, and it’s going to be like that through the next game and maybe the games after that until the second semester.

Takeshi hits the wall with his good arm and slides down to face Kyouko’s pale form. She’s too insensible to even notice that he fell.

He’s practically alone, but she’s right there, maybe a little anemic or something, he’s not sure what happened, and the conditions are just right for his carefully composed facade of easygoing joy to finally crack.

In that dirty corner of the Koyama Middle School stairwell, he lets himself freak out a little. He lets himself breath erratically and he lets himself laugh less like something is funny (though a lot of what just happened _is_ funny, he’s just not sure _what_ yet) and more like his nerves are choking him and twisting his head in bizarre shapes. He lets his pent-up energy dance out in more than just laughter, with trembling and panic and desperate dread, and he’s not even sure if it’s about baseball anymore, but it’s making him confused and scared, more than he’s ever been in his life.

“M’dizzy,” Kyouko mumbles, startling Takeshi out of his nervous breakdown.

“It’s okay,” Takeshi smiles, immediately bottling up everything he was just about to let go. “That was weird, haha. But at least everything went right.”

“Mmhmm…” Kyouko lifts her head, and Takeshi winces when he sees her nose is bleeding too. He wipes it with his shirt and gives her an uneasy smile. She winces apologetically and pulls away from him, leaving him feeling like he just lost all the warmth the world could offer. He lets out a breathy chuckle. He’s okay. He’s fine. Kyouko must be his friend now. He had no idea making friends would be this easy. He’ll probably befriend everyone Tsuna knows when they all go to Miyazawa. And he won’t have to resort to baseball once. He’s going to be alright.

He’s okay.

He’s fine.

  
  


* * *

 

_The kotatsu is warm. There’s a feeling like glowing electric jelly that isn’t supposed to be here but it is warm. Kyouko is young and her hair spills like small rivers across the surface of the table, and Ryouhei is lying on his back with his arms spread out. They’re sleeping._

_Tsuna reaches out, and it feels like his arms stretch out to infinity. He pulls them back, and back behind him, and with a sense of gravity that doesn’t feel quite right, pushes himself up. He feels hazy and floating even if he’s just standing on the ground. His breath comes out in cold vapour, but Kyouko and Ryouhei’s breath does not._

_Tsuna turns around, slowly, drifting, to see a door. His vision blurs, makes it hard to catch the details. It’s made of wood. It’s got a little plate on it, because it’s an apartment door._

_213._

_He runs his hand along the wood. He feels very drowsy, and he can taste jasmine on his tongue._

_His hand slips around the cold metal (freezing metal) of the doorknob and turns._

_A periwinkle blue carpet. It’s very memorable. It’s very familiar. There are men’s shoes on the side. Tsuna knows who’s shoes these are. He is mad at this person. He is mad. He is mad._

_And then the rest of it falls into a black abyss, where the light can’t even penetrate. The edge between carpet and nothingness is blurry and unfocused. He reaches out, and his fingers get colder and colder and it gets harder and harder to physically keep a hold of the door to apartment 213 and his hand phases right through, sending him careening into the great black nothing, and it feels like there is ice in his lungs and he_ screams

  
  


* * *

 

 

Tsuna jolts awake in a cold sweat at the earliest whisps of dawn, and his dream evaporates and vanishes like it was never there.

He’s freezing, and he doesn’t understand why. The weather? He shudders and looks out the window. The outside sky _looks_  cold, cloudless and coloured with steadily lightening blue that highlights the outline of Namimori, but hospitals should probably have better insulation than that. He sits up and pushes his blankets away, and the white fabric and dead silence fill him with queasy familiarity, so striking that if the foot of the bed were facing the door, he might have had a panic attack. It’s been a while since his feelings were this raw.

His chest doesn't hurt as much, but he still fishes an ice pack from the container he was provided with and clutches it tightly to his chest. It gives him a bite he's starting to get real familiar with, and painful numbing that drowns out his rib's complaints.

Tsuna lets out a sigh that fills the lonely silence. He is so,  _so_  happy he's out of here today.

The white walls, white beds, and green curtain feel at odds with what he wants to feel right now, where he wants to be; in a still dark house only lit by the barest of light through the windows, up because he had another nightmare and doesn't want to go back to bed. That place just outside the front door where he sits, teasing the underlying urge to escape for no real reason at all, but staying on those front steps anyway, breathing in cold morning air and feeling the breeze making his pajamas and hair flutter slightly. Filled with the power of having the ability to run, but never taking the extra step. (Sometimes he does, though, and Tsuna will never relate the story of how he ended up lost in downtown Namimori in nothing but his pajamas out loud.)

Well, the hospital room is kind of stuffy, anyway.

Tsuna gets up very, very carefully, making sure to clutch the sides of his chest (he can't put pressure on the ribcage itself) to make sure he isn't stretching anything, and slides down off the bed. The linoleum floor is cold against his toes, and he shudders under the combined feeling of both that and the ice pack. He knows, objectively, that standing around outside will get him even colder, but he's gotten really dedicated to the whole idea of the hospital room being stuffy in the past few seconds.

Tsuna carefully opens his door and peeks out, trying to ignore the jabbing pain in his chest at the slightest movement. No one around in this area. He decides to move quickly, using his thigh muscles to carry his weight, rushing around the corner before anyone can spot him and push him back to the stuffy room and the plain bed and the leftover things from his visits that can't really hold his attention at this hour.

He's spotted by a nurse on the stairs, but he just walks right past, clearly too exhausted to deal with Tsuna's problems. Tsuna raises his eyebrows at this, but trudges on. Won't look a gift horse in the mouth, if he can. He doubts he'll safely get out the front door, though, so he takes the stairs up, up, up as far as they'll go. If he can't get any fresh air, at least he still has the ability to wander around. Whatever kills time.

The top of the hospital staircase is a small metal door. Tsuna tests it, and is genuinely surprised that it not only opens, but opens to the hospital roof. Shouldn't these things be locked? Tsuna's desire to get on the roof was only a compulsion wrought from old habits and how unlikely it is he’d be able to go outside from the ground floor. This is _suspiciously_  good fortune.

He freezes with the door slightly ajar, thinking back on how his joy of the fight was balanced out with a broken rib. What if his joy of friendship is balanced out by...he doesn't know what a good equivalent is. Getting arrested?

What if going on the roof means going to jail?

Actually, hell with it. Hibari probably owns Namimori's jail cells. If Hibari says 'tomorrow', that's what's happening. Hibari may actually break him out of jail in order to fight him.

Tsuna walks as confidently as he can out onto the rubber grain of the roof. The top of the hospital isn't meant to be lounged on, and there's no fences or anything preventing a hypothetical patient from falling to their hypothetical untimely death. Which is yet another reason that door should have been locked.

Tsuna gently walks out farther. There's a pile of something-or-other — probably junked equipment — covered by some tarps, and the area is boxed in by higher levels that he supposes are offices not accessible through the main stairwell. The rooftop he can walk over is actually a fairly small square.

He was right about the refreshing feeling of being outside at the crack of dawn. The air is dead, but it's still cold and fills his lungs with the sort of life he wasn't getting inside the building. The view of the bright yellow streak of horizon contrasted against the dark silhouette of the city and rich night sky is a beautiful, invigorating sight that makes him feel excited and daring. It's not illegal, or forbidden, just...far more living than usual.

Actually, being on the hospital roof might actually be a crime. He should probably go back.

Tsuna almost does, he even turns on his heel, but then he sees a dark shape against the shadows. The top of what looks like a head.

He inches forward, carefully, trying not to make any noise even in his noiseless bare feet. Definitely a head. A head of messy black hair, set just in front of the ledge of the roof.

Tsuna shuffles closer and closer, each step moving like he's on a tightrope, feeling like he's approaching a lion more than a person. There's a sensation pressing against him that tells him this might not be something he can confront, something too big to really get into. He can make out shoulders now, creased with something, maybe a bag. He takes another few steps. Not a bag. A sling. Another few steps. The figure is starting to look familiar.

Tsuna stops with his toes curled around the edge of the roof. Underneath him is a thin ledge hovering over a seven-storey drop that he couldn't be paid a million dollars to sit on.

On that ledge is Yamamoto Takeshi.

"Hey," Takeshi whispers, a slight smile looking like a slash on his face in this dark. "You're up early."

"What on earth are you doing on the roof?" Tsuna asks. He feels like maybe he should also interrogate when the hell Takeshi broke his arm, but he seems like the kind of guy just intense enough to do something that stupid. Tsuna deeply identifies with him.

"Oh. Uh. Kyouko-chan sneaked me in here, actually. For a…for a thing. Her mom’s a nurse, I think? I’m just. You know. Waiting for…stuff. Not like I have a lot else to do, with…" Takeshi looks down at the ground, metres upon metres upon metres below his dangling feet, and then at the white bindings of the cast.

"At least it won't take three weeks," Tsuna says quietly.

"Yeah! …Yeah. It'll get better. Probably not in time for the the next match, though. I mean. Definitely. Because they told me I couldn’t play. But I don’t know about the summer tournament, so…so yeah, maybe I’ll get better in time for the summer tournament. Nothing much to worry about." Tsuna can't see Takeshi's face from this angle, just the back of his head, the curve of his ear as a black outline against the black city, highlighted by steadily rising gold. It's just shapes, no face at all, but the memory of Takeshi's haunted eyes two days before lights in his mind like a firecracker.

Tsuna gazes at the ground, an almost infinite distance below, and closes his eyes against the steady throb of pain in his chest, his rib complaining as it heals, whining as it mends.

There's always something between being not okay and being okay.

"Are you going to jump?"

Takeshi lets out a surprise burst of laughter. "What? Of course not!"

"Sorry. You just look a little..."

"I'm not going to jump off a roof because I can't use my arm for a little while," Takeshi laughs, but it rings hollow in Tsuna's ears. Tsuna is missing something. He's always missing something. He's always missed out on his cues, missed out on his steps, and now he might miss out on his friends, because he really is so, _so_  bad at friendship. He still doesn’t remember if he’s supposed to like Takeshi or not. They’re friends, and you’re supposed to like friends, right? Friends support each other and stuff.

Tsuna carefully gets down on his knees, and pulls one leg after the other out from under him so he's sitting on his behind with his feet dangling down like Takeshi's are. His knees are at level with Takeshi's head. Tsuna wants to get closer, but there is no way in hell he's going to get down on that ledge.

He looks out on the horizon. Tries to think of reasons Takeshi might want to come up here. All he can think of is the same reasons he did, that false escape, intentionally breaking from his safe little box to feel the air on his skin.

"Do you ever think about running away?" Tsuna asks.

Takeshi glances up at him. "Running away?"

"I don't think I've ever told anyone about it, but sometimes, I feel the urge to escape. Just drop everything and run."

"Dad says you should never run from your problems."

"That's not what I meant." Tsuna's eyes flick down to the trees in the distance, lining the road around the hospital. "I mean, I want to run away for no reason. Sometimes I fantasize about...about just taking everything in my life I love, all the things that make me happy, and throwing it away, and running somewhere far away where I'll never see it again."

"What kind of fantasy is that?" Takeshi's laugh sounds a little darker now.

"I don't know. It was harder to control when I was younger. I used to run away from home a lot. Sleep under the tables overnight at internet cafes, and I wouldn't come home until they called my mom to come pick me up. I think that's why people think I'm so weird now." Tsuna's throat is starting to hurt a little. "I can't help it. Sometimes when something good happens to me I get...I get really scared. And I don't want to be there anymore."

"Why?"

Tsuna feels his jawline tremble, but keeps his voice steady. Explaining his innermost thoughts to someone he barely knows is not exactly an enjoyable experience. "I think I...I think I'm scared of things going away. I'd rather cut my losses and live in an internet cafe than think of...of what if, maybe, my mom's going to leave like my dad did, and then I'm going to live in a house all by myself and there's going to be no one left who likes me anymore, and there'll be no one left to find me, and one day someone's going to ask them where their kid is and they just say they never had one, because they  _forgot_."

Takeshi is silent for a moment.

His next words are in a whisper. "That really doesn't make any sense."

"Shut up. I was nine."

"Hahaha...I don't think I ever had thoughts like that. I've never heard of anything like that either."

"I don't think people usually like talking about their weird thoughts," Tsuna mumbles. "I mean, I couldn't say stuff like that to Kyouko. I don't know if I could explain to her that I feel the constant need to break off our friendship forever and move to...I don't know, France."

"Do you even know French?"

"No. That's why I like the idea of moving to France. There's nothing familiar. Nothing left to run from."

"You might get mugged."

"Uh...ha. Hahaha!" Tsuna lets out a few soft giggles. They're mostly soft because they're sending shockwaves of pain through his chest in their most delicate, baby huffing state, and he can't manage anything stronger. "Yeah, I, I might get mugged."

They sit in comfortable silence, a little more settled, and the pressure warning Tsuna off from Takeshi has gone. The outline of Takeshi's face is still distinct, but now he can see more of his skin in the soft glow of the rising sun.

Tsuna hasn't gotten to the heart of the problem yet. He's not sure how he knows there's a problem with Takeshi, but he hasn't reached it yet, he knows, like he knows that the thing just under his skin never went away, he just grew more skin to crush it back.

Takeshi definitely feels better, but there's always a state between not okay and okay.

"Do you want to jump off the roof?"

Takeshi doesn't laugh.

"No."

Tsuna purses his lips and avoids looking at Takeshi.

"But I think about it, sometimes."

Tsuna straightens and watches the glowing edges of skin at the bridge of Takeshi's nose in the closest thing to total attention he can manage at this angle.

"How so?"

"Uhm, it's a little stupid—"

"I just told you I actively fantasize about ruining my own life."

"Okay, okay. Uh...well...sometimes, I...I think about, you know, climbing onto the school roof, and then saying I'm going to jump, and having everyone come look at me and talk to me and tell me all the things they really think about me to get me back. I don't really think about jumping off the roof, actually jumping, obviously, I mean, I don't want to die, but I just like to think about how everyone would talk to me if I said I would do it." It all comes out in a stilted, disorganized rush, a thoughtless outpouring of pure feeling and concept.

Tsuna considers it. "That's the most normal horrible self-destructive fantasy I've ever heard. I can't believe you are this boring."

" _Hahahaha_!" Takeshi leans over in laughter, and Tsuna has to restrain himself from grabbing him by the collar to keep him from falling to his death or something. That ledge is  _so small_ , and Tsuna doesn't feel comfortable with Takeshi moving in any way, shape or form while perched upon it.

"Is that it? It's fine to think about stuff like that, you know. That's practically healthy."

"I know. But I don't like thinking about how selfish it is. I mean, everyone is always looking to me as the ace of the baseball team, and they're acting like I'm so amazing because I'm talented like that. But I haven't really been improving much lately, and my batting average is going down, and not as many people are happy for me any more. I, uh...Sometimes it feels like I'm obligated to be good, and if I'm not doing my very best, then I don't...then I don't...then I don't really have any reason to be there."

Takeshi's voice is wobbling a bit.

"I'm really trying to be, you know, friendly, and everyone's friendly back, but everyone is treating me like some untouchable idol, and I don't know how to be friends anymore. I try and I try and it never works, I’m still just a classmate, or the cool kid in class and I…I think if I stop being good at baseball, I'm going to not have friends for the rest of my life."

"Well you have friends, now, at least."

"Y-yeah, and, I'm really happy," his voice breaks, "because it was starting to scare me a little to think about, that maybe I would just be by myself. And even if I got hurt no one would care unless it meant I couldn't play for them, and if," a pause for a shaky, wet breath, "and if I ask someone for advice they wouldn't really care about what I'm feeling at all, and I don't really feel like a person sometimes. I love baseball more than anything, but it kept going on and on like that, and I kept thinking that maybe if I got better at baseball, they might be impressed, and actually talk to me, and I could invite them over for dinner or something, just…it’s boring stuff really," he bites off a sob before it gets all the way out of his throat.

Tsuna lets him have a moment to gather his breath and smooth out the trembles in his voice. Even when he starts again, it comes out in an unstable pitch, thick and damp-sounding.

"So, I think about telling everyone I'm going to jump off the roof, and I don't think about actually doing it, but I like to...I like to think about everyone telling me all the reasons not to do it. And I like to think about all of the reasons they would tell me that aren't about just baseball. I want people to tell me that they remember I just live with my dad and that," a quick, desperate gasp, "that he owns the sushi restaurant, and that I'm always nice, and I never cause anyone any trouble, and maybe I'm good to be around, and maybe I make them feel something, maybe they just didn't tell me they liked me because no one else was doing it, but because I'm going to jump off the roof, it's really important that they say so, and," the 'and' comes out as a high-pitched squeak dragged out of his throat on the tail end of a breath, "and then..."

He bows his head and visibly holds his breath to fight down the tears that have somehow not yet started spilling down his cheeks yet. Tsuna isn't sure how, because _he's_  already started crying.

"And then I get down from the roof and we're best friends from then on and everything's okay, and I can have someone to talk to sometimes, and they come over for dinner and they tell me about themselves because they want me to know, and all I had to do was step on the roof, and even if that never happens, even if everyone tells me that it's okay because  _I'm really good at baseball_ , and that's the only thing worth liking about me and that's the only thing I'll ever be good for even if I _really do like playing_ , that's okay, because I'm still on the roof and the ledge is already there and even if I don't have any reason to be there anymore I can still  _see my mom again—_ "

He takes a desperate breath, sucking in like he's trying to drown out how loud and unstable his voice had gotten at the end, but he's already too worked up and it just shakes roughly out of him again. The tears clinging to his eyes finally fall, and Takeshi automatically moves to wipe them away.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

Tsuna grabs his wrist.

"If you do a  _single thing_  to hide how sad you are right now, I'm going to shove you off this roof myself."

Takeshi finally looks up at him. They stare at each other, mirroring wide eyes, trembling chins, and tear-stained cheeks.

A smile tries to fight its way onto his lips, but it breaks, and Takeshi's entire face contorts at that one small failure. He lets out a long, high whine that's barely audible, more of a wheeze, really.

Tsuna swallows and drags his hand down Takeshi's wrist and holds his hand, tightly, firmly, and thinks this whole situation is kind of unorthodox for someone he really wanted to kick  _really_  hard only a few days ago, and he's not sure how to go about it. Even if they were best friends, he'd probably have no idea how to go about this.

The whine goes pear-shaped into a deeper wail that breaks up into rough, jagged groaning, followed by another wail, and again, and again, until Takeshi is crying outright. It's the ugliest crying Tsuna has ever heard, he thinks, but he still takes in the sound and intentionally allows it to wreck him, and he lets out a few shuddering sobs too, even though they hurt more than any sort of emotionally freeing action ought to. He can't help it.

They sit on the roof for a long time, crying like a pair of tortured cows. Tsuna's starting to lose feeling in his hand from Takeshi's death-grip, but he doesn't try to take his hand away, or say anything, or even move. He lets Takeshi wail at the sky until it lightens from star-dotted night to pale blue, until the silhouettes of Namimori start taking a more clear form, and the sun threatens to peek out from beyond the hills.

There's a state between not okay and okay, and Tsuna wonders if maybe Takeshi hadn't quite reached that middle point until just now.

  
  


* * *

 

 

They walk down the stairs together, still holding hands. Their faces are red and chapped from all the crying, and Tsuna feels even hotter and sicker than ever before. He forgot crying makes you feel like garbage and is a terrible idea.

"I think I read somewhere that talking about your problems makes it worse," Takeshi says after a moment. His voice sounds rough.

"Well, I guess we have to never mention that this ever happened for the rest of our lives," Tsuna replies.

Takeshi bursts into a fit of giggles.

It's a really nice sound.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Psychology Hour With Wyrvel!**  
>  _Today's episode: Attention Seeking Behaviours and Abuse Symptoms._  
>  In this chapter, Tsuna and Takeshi talk about their coping mechanisms for the abuse they receive; specifically, emotional neglect. Neglect is a very important type of abuse to watch out for, because it's so easy to perform, and never seems to be that big a deal, especially when it's received in school situations. However, long-term neglect can have some pretty painful effects on a young kid's psychology. Here, Takeshi is experiencing neglect by not receiving any meaningful communication from his peers aside from superficial compliments of his baseball skill, and having his positive relationship with his classmates and teammates being held hostage in exchange for his prowess as an ace. Tsuna is just flat-out bullied.
> 
> Takeshi copes with attention-seeking behaviours. A lot of people are derisive towards attention-seekers, which is ridiculous, because it's a symptom of abuse and extreme emotional instability, and people who are seeking attention to the point of performing extreme behaviour like faking a suicide attempt probably have a reason for being so over-dependent on attention. It's a common response to being ignored and dismissed, and is a method of awkward, indirect communication that can get out of hand the more you dismiss it.
> 
> Tsuna copes with self-destructive behaviour that generates a false sense of power. He expects failure, so he has the constant urge to destroy it all himself, so he has power over the potential loss; it's easier to get rid of something than to have it taken away. He also has a lot of issues with abandonment, so his avoidance issues are focused on people he cares about. He enjoys the middle-ground of things going well for him but no one getting too close.
> 
> Both of these are extremely common and natural stress reactions that help control one's emotional state, but they're also not very healthy urges, and going through with them is dangerous and potentially life-ruining. In the very least, it stacks old emotional problems with new ones.
> 
> It's also important to remember that Tsuna and Takeshi are dumbass teenagers with intimacy issues. You shouldn't actually downtalk someone when they're trying to share their experiences; it’s often a huge challenge for people to make dramatic, intimate statements out loud.
> 
> If you ever had to deal with urges like these: it's okay! You're not over-reacting or being selfish for feeling that way. You don't have to be beaten or mocked to ‘justify’ your extreme emotional state. Sometimes isolation can hurt you just as badly.


	9. A Point Of View - The Record Of Gokudera Hayato

 

**\- Child -**

* * *

 

Hayato's first memories are from when he was three.

Long hair trailing around him. Long fingers against his face, against the piano keys. The shape of her lips when she smiled. He watched her hands religiously, trying his best to imitate them with his chubby little stubs, he worshiped the moments they spent together, flashes of memory that stay eternally lodged in his mind.

When he's four, she doesn't come anymore, and he's too young to truly feel the loss.

When he's five, Bianchi starts cooking.

There's something odd about the food Bianchi makes. Back then, it wasn't really too awful, just...strangely rich. There was something  _off_ about her cooking, but she wasn't doing anything wrong, so people didn't investigate.

When Hayato is six, Bianchi's cooking starts killing people.

It was just making the staff sick, at first, and everyone passed it off as it being a little  _too_ rich, but then she feeds a man she has a crush on, that Hayato thinks might have had a crush on her too, and he dies from food poisoning. It gets worse. Symptoms vary depending who she's feeding, and sometimes it seems like the people she is happiest to cook for are the ones most likely to die.

Hayato is scared, because he loves his sister, and he's sure she loves him.

Through some degree of ridiculous luck, the symptoms for the things she makes him are nothing more extreme than hallucinogens and stomach aches. Her cookies make him insensible, but never dead, even though he's young and his body is weak.

Her cookies also do something  _weird_ to his piano playing.

His father and the audiences he plays for adore it. Hayato is force-fed Bianchi's food, shoved out on stage completely beyond all reasoning, and then forced to listen to recordings of the erratic compositions his addled mind made up so he can write them down in his composition book and play them cleanly while in his right mind. The pattern continues endlessly, and Hayato finds no joy in the piano like this, as incredibly popular as he's become. He barely remembers what it's like to play when he's under the influence, and the music sounds like light, feathery nonsense to his ears when he's lucid.

He feels sick when he has to touch the piano keys. He feels sick when he looks at Bianchi. He's always sick, and he wants no more of this.

That's when the doctor gets his attention.

The doctor is there to make Bianchi's cooking even deadlier, as far as Hayato is aware. He'll ask her to put her hands in some sort of dish, and then suddenly fungus sprouts out from underneath her hands, followed by mosses, lichen, fluffy white balls that look like hairy marimo. Hayato thinks she's some sort of nature goddess reincarnated, and always sneaks into the doctor's room to watch her grow things between her fingers.

Hayato starts using it as a distraction. He takes up gardening and urges Bianchi to help him with his plants until she forgets about feeding him entirely. It means he has to replay old songs endlessly during recitals, but it saves his stomach, and the things she grows in those plots are always so  _bizarre_  looking.

 _New plant breeds_ , their father notes, and he's happy with them and their little gardening moments. Hayato is safe here.

There's also the bugs. Bianchi attracts a lot of bugs. Flies are suddenly compelled to lay maggots, worms like to crawl out into open air if her skin is touching the earth for too long, millipedes settle in her tea set and the kitchen seems to be perpetually infested with beetles. She just throws them into her concoctions, for ' _texture'_.

That's one side of her power. The other side is the rotting.

Bianchi doesn't like the doctor, and sometimes she throws a fit, and one time she did so with her hands shoved in one of their flowerpots and the aloe vera plant flopped over and turned into soup. Grass under her toes wilts when she's angry. The doctor tries to plant kisses on her hairline and her cheek, always affectionate and always complimenting her cuteness, and she's furious in response, and making his coat fray with just a touch. It doesn't work on human skin, but not for lack of trying.

Hayato is only seven and he's further convinced that his older sister is a deity incarnate.

The doctor talks to their father. They are worried. Twelve-year-old girls are not supposed to be deities incarnate. Their father doesn't want to do anything, because it might stop her cookies from being genius-piano-inducing hallucinogenics, and Hayato doesn't want to do anything because he's scared of what that 'something' might be.

The doctor says it's just a disorder causing all of this. He says her best opportunities are in the mafia. He says that she can't have a normal life like this. He calls her a 'walking disease'. He says she'll probably excel.

It's confusing and uncertain, the conversation, and Hayato eats a plateful of cookies the next recital without complaining. He retches for hours, but it's the best original he's produced yet.

He keeps asking about the mafia from then on. No one will tell him anything, so the next time the doctor comes around the mansion with another one of his endless  _sisters_ hanging off his arm, Hayato demands to be told about all about it, chasing the man around and bribing him with the numbers and schedules and personal effects of the women around the mansion that he thinks the doctor might have a crush on, anything that works, until he gives in. The doctor introduces himself as  _Trident Shamal_ , a powerful assassin who knows all about diseases, and can kill and incapacitate someone without even trying.

He is easily the coolest person Hayato knows, and he's determined to 'excel' in this 'mafia' business too with his help. His sister is already so much older and so much more distant, but Hayato is tempted by the fantasy of powerful beings like his sister, beings that can match her, support her, go against her, without crumbling or festering or rotting. It seems impossible. Hayato wants to be one of those people, if only so he can build up an immunity to the cookies.

Shamal uses little pills filled with special mosquitoes. Hayato is quick to demand to learn how to control mosquitoes too, but Shamal dismisses him and gives him a few fireworks that would 'suit a volatile brat like you'. Hayato feels he's being made fun of, but he likes the big explosions, and practices using them anyway. With the power of some basic math, Hayato figures out how to toss them at the right angle to make perfect arcs. He can't do it with wind though (and upon asking, all the math around wind resistance is way above his level), and they don't actually do any damage, but he's proud of himself.

He shows off his skill to Shamal the next time he visits. Shamal gives him cherry bombs next.

Molotov cocktails. Pellets of gunpowder. Plastic explosive targets that detonate so loudly that Hayato lost his hearing for a day. Even something as simple as matches — every time Shamal arrives, he gives Hayato something new without saying anything, under the assumption that Hayato can do something with it by the time Shamal next visits.

Hayato's room empties of plants and fills up with homemade explosives. His sister watches him, sometimes, but she doesn't come to play anymore.

Then, when Hayato manages to use a bow and arrow, a bag of flour, and creative placement of a torch to detonate a minefield trap into a massive, deafening fire flower that consumes the already-scorched field, Shamal says he'll teach Hayato how to use small explosives, and that's that. He's finally the doctor's student.

And it's  _hell_.

Shamal's first task is to grind advanced mathematics into Hayato's head; apparently, children learn very quickly, for a 'genius' like Hayato, there's no excuse not to power through years worth of math groundwork in order to gain the knowledge necessary to calculate wind speed, wind resistance, trajectory, patterns for target movement and direction and quick-calculations and it makes Hayato's head hurt, but this sort of thing is mandatory for long-ranged fighters. Shamal says 'every sniper is a mathematician', like that somehow changes the fact that Hayato is seven and has years ahead of him to learn this stuff. And yet, he still studies, and develops the habit of taking a pencil and notepad everywhere he goes just in case there's something new to calculate.

While Shamal isn't visiting the mansion, Hayato begs families to take him in. It's...not a very productive use of his time, ultimately.

At first, the excuses are simple. He'll hammer on the door and demand to see the boss, and prostrate himself and beg to be taken into their  _famiglia_ , and the boss will sneer at his age, then at his clothes.  _Some spoiled rich brat who doesn't know what it means to be part of the Underworld_. It's a fair assumption. Hayato itches to prove his worth, trains harder and harder, but the sneers don't leave.

The year plunges into winter. He's eight, now, and Shamal won't visit until spring this time. Bianchi is happy, and their father takes her and her mother farther south, where the air is damp and heavy. Hayato opts to stay. He has to keep trying. He has to prove to them he can do it. His recitals become rarer, the bandages on his arms and fingers and shins from the sparks and flames become more numerous, but he has to  _keep trying_.

He kicks the gates, knocks on the doors, follows mafiosi around into dark alleys and tunnels. Begs to see their boss. Prostrates himself. His piano pieces have become more exclusive and thus more expensive, drawing in those who love to spend money, so now even more of them know of his current profession, mock him for wanting to get involved with the Underground and blow his pretty little fingers off when he can use them for the piano, precious piano, the piano that defines him.

Hayato hates playing now. He keeps trying.

He sneaks into bars and asks around for more Famiglie, even gangs that might evaporate and get absorbed into a mafia group, he heard that happens sometimes. Most of them tell him that the mafia families put their kids in schools, and if they're going to poach the young, they'd go for one of them. Hayato becomes obsessed with learning and education, because maybe he can get a scholarship, be one of them, a credential that can push him into their gaze.

When Bianchi comes back with their father, she's clutching an old, glossy photograph like it's all that matters to her.

He keeps training. His entire body is covered in burns, now, but he hasn't proved himself yet, and no one will take him in yet, so he can't possibly stop.

Shamal comes back to Hayato half-dead from all of his efforts, and they make paper planes for moving targets, and Hayato is sure if he could at least prove to  _Shamal_  that he can do something, maybe he'll help Hayato out somehow. At least to get into one of those schools. They start sending them into the air, and Hayato uses all of his mathematical precision to blow them up with his little sticks of dynamite, and he's close.

But he never figures out how to hit them. He’s making headway fighting his way through the streets, though, and that should have been worth something, but Shamal gives up on him after that. He just leaves.

Hayato doesn't stop trying.

Dinner is a quiet affair, isolated and quiet, and Hayato's stomach churns when he looks at his sister fawning over her picture. He's furious. Confused. Upset. Distraught. Unsure. Lost. No one understands how hard he's working, and they're just leaving him behind. Hayato wants them to understand. Hayato wants them to see him. He just wants to...

He doesn't know what he wants. So he keeps trying.

He and Bianchi share the study, a new method of reconnecting, even though it's quickly becoming apparent that Hayato can't look at her without becoming physically ill. Her cookies have done their psychological damage. Still, it's not as bad with her long cherry-tinged brown hair hanging around her face as she pours over her books, peeks at her picture.

One time she runs to use the washroom, and Hayato sneaks over to her spot to see what it is she's been obsessed with for so long. The picture is old, a bit worn, but in good condition otherwise. It depicts a handsome-looking man standing on a balcony with the backdrop of a night sky around him, holding a flute of champagne to his lips and smirking at the camera. He's in a perfectly fitted black suit, with a fedora tipped over his eyes, and the only real identifying feature on him is the way his sideburns curl at the ends.

He flips the picture over. In a quick scrawl written in pen are the words  _'I'll be waiting in Verona. -R'_.

He gently places it back, goes back to his spot, and wonders if that man will die when Bianchi finally meets him.

Summer comes quickly after that.

_You're too damn young for this life._

He memorizes streets, alleys, inhabited buildings, uninhabited buildings.

_What are you gonna do, play the piano for us?_

He memorizes faces, patterns, people he needs to watch out for, people he can trust.

_Some spoiled rich baby working for me? Are you kidding?_

People start recognizing him. Place him as a target. Hayato burns them away. Even if Shamal abandoned him, he learned well.

_Why the hell would I let a half-breed bastard work for me?_

Well. That's a new one.

It's the first big-name mafia famiglia he's asked, so he expected a slightly different response, even if it was a new way to reject him, but he doesn't understand what he means. For the first time in over a year, he willingly socializes with the staff at the mansion to ask what on earth the man meant, but everyone is cagey. They look at him with wide, pitying eyes, and he doesn't  _understand_.

In the last hot swells of August, he passes by a pair of gossiping maids and finally hears it.

The woman with long fingers and long hair and wonderful curve to her lips, tracing her hands along the piano keys like they were made to settle there. Not a tutor, not an employee with a skill she felt compelled to impart on him. Not a guest that wanted to spend time with him.

 _His mother_.

His Japanese mother. The mother who named him. The mother that filled up his earliest memories.

She's dead, she's been dead since he was three years old, and according to evidence – despite the law ruling it an accidental car crash – the one at fault is his philandering father trying to clean up loose ends. Bianchi is only his half sister. The woman he thought was his real mother, always absent to the point she barely exists to him, knows him as dirty, illegitimate remains, a half-breed, proof of his father's sins.

He runs away from home that night, and doesn't look back.

* * *

  **\- Street -**

* * *

 

Hayato is nine and homeless.

He can no longer afford to build his explosives, so he hoards materials and learns to fight with his fists and his teeth. The faces he learns stretches out to the homeless, the storekeepers, the generous who let him eat their scraps, let him use their leftovers. He sprouts on fast feet and the hands of others, but he knows that it's just a stage between worthlessness and independence. He's just not there yet. He just has to keep trying.

One thing Hayato quickly finds very useful for eating up his sudden free time are seed packets. He starts planting them in his temporary shelters, repossessed houses, abandoned buildings, and derelict company properties no one looks into anymore. He even plants them in other people's backyards, in their flowerpots, in alleyways and abandoned soil bags. The entire city is green and alive, and there's a map of of his infinite garden inside of every head of the street rats he rolls with. It’s not a lot, but it gives everyone something to do, and it’s food if they can get at it before it’s stolen.

Sometimes, he'll visit one of his plants only to find it's mutated wildly into something new and alien, coated in a light dusting of fungus. He doesn't touch those plants, but he doesn't get rid of them either.

Hayato starts practicing with fireworks again, since it's too expensive to waste his dynamite on keeping his senses sharp. He finds they work fantastically as distractions, and even better as alarms. Small communities all around the city pick him up every night, and he's hidden away in the darkest heart of the Underworld, sitting cosy with the Blackmarket dregs, a hopeless place where he feels safest.

He learns how to patrol. He learns how to read hand signals. He learns to convey intention in facial expressions alone. He learns survival skills for a crowded city of innocents. He can pick pockets with the best of them, he knows how to startle people into dropping purses and food. He harvests scrapyards for metals, grocery stores for more seeds, small crimes piling up and up out of necessity. He understands the gap between this life and his previous one, now, and doesn't blame the bosses for dismissing him.

Sometimes someone will try to retrieve him and bring him back home, and he becomes quicker on his feet and more aggressive as a result. Sometimes they send Bianchi. She lets him go every time, even though the sight of her makes him so sick she could easily pick him up and drag him back. He's all teeth and nails and bright lights and anger, and he  _can't stop_. She knows this. He's so thankful she knows this.

Once an entrenching gang catches him unawares, and the precious moments spent fumbling with matches cost him his leg. He couldn't work for weeks, and he knew the fear of not being able to survive, two months of depending on everyone else like a crutch. He starts taking up smoking as a necessity, works on his match-striking speed while he's bedridden. He coughs constantly, nearly throws up, but he keeps the cigarettes on him anyway.

It's not enough. He has to keep trying.

He's never going to be enough, but he has to keep trying.

* * *

  **\- Value -**

* * *

 

Hayato is ten when he meets Reborn.

Bianchi is fifteen and has invited him to her new apartment, and he agrees only because she has a contact with spare materials for bomb making and a set of spare textbooks for reading. He was lured in with the prospect of maybe getting proper schooling again, and he wants to devour the new information he hasn't had access to in so long.

There's a toddler in her apartment, reclining on her couch, with cartoonishly curling sideburns, a fedora tipped over his eyes, and a yellow dull-glowing pacifier around his neck. She calls him Reborn. She says he's her boyfriend.

Hayato thinks of long limbs, a finely fitted suit, and the handsome outline of a face in a photograph far too old for him to still be that young. The baby's father, probably. It's likely the best she could get.

"How old is he?" Hayato asks.

"Age doesn't matter," Bianchi says passionately.

"Fifty-two," the baby says snidely.

Bianchi goes to the kitchen to cook, and Hayato immediately plans his escape, ignoring the weirdly intent way the groomed boyfriend-to-be looks at him. When he gets one leg out her window, the toddler speaks again.

"You're quite popular for someone unrelated to the mafia."

Hayato glares over his shoulder. "What's that supposed to mean?"

" _'Smoking Bomb Hayato'. 'Sparking Hurricane'_.  _'Firestorm Kid'_. You're picking up quite a few nicknames."

Hayato brightens immediately, flushing with pleasure. "Am I?"

"I'm sure some lower tier families would be happy to pick you up."

Hayato puts his foot back into the room. "Would they?"

"Would you join them?"

"What? Of course I wo- _ **UGYA**_!" His delighted proclamation is brutally cut off by the baby jumping six feet across the room to kick him in the face.

"You're too shallow," Reborn announces, strolling casually across the ground to hop back onto the couch. "You need to be more wise in your decisions."

"What even gives you the  _right_?" Hayato snarls, fingers itching against the dynamite he still carries with him.

"Experience. I'm the world's strongest hitman."

Hayato instantly pales. He had forgotten that name,  _Reborn_ , and the quiet background buzz of the  _'world's strongest infants'_. Little kids wearing colourful pacifiers are basically instant no-strike zones. He was sloppy.

And why the hell is Bianchi dating/grooming an exceptionally powerful hitman-infant anyway? Why would Reborn even  _agree_  to that?

"What kind of boss would you follow?" Reborn continues easily, sipping from a cup of tea that is billowing violet clouds, which is the most terrifying thing Hayato has ever seen in his entire life.

"U-Uh...One that will take me?"

This time Reborn shoots him with rubber bullets. One even breaks skin, and he howls in pain.

"Wrong. New talent needs to go to those who know to control it," Reborn says. "Your sister worries about where you're going, and she's right to. You're sloppy. Unmoulded. If you're going to lend your body out to hire, it needs to be someone who can control you. Someone who will only make you better."

"Make me better?" Hayato peers up at the baby from the fetal position he has fallen into on the floor.

"You're not the type who can be chained down. You'll never be happy with a mediocre boss who will only use you until you expire." Reborn takes another sip, and continues to not die from it. _The scariest baby._ "But you're young. Just about anyone can control you, at your age. You don't have the experience to choose your battles right."

"Then what the hell's the point of telling me off? I'll just get the experience from any old family and use that-"

Another trio of bullets. Hayato yelps and hides behind the armchair. "Sloppy."

"ARE YOU GIVING ME ANY ADVICE OR NOT?" He howls from behind the furniture.

"Don't look for power. Don't look for glory. Don't look for the interesting or the dangerous. Look for the indirect."

"Indirect? The hell does that mean?"

"The best sort of boss doesn't shove their underlings around. They guide them. They make them want to be loyal. They make them want to be better. They make them excel on their own terms. If you can't find a boss like that, you're wasting your potential."

Hayato pauses.

He peeks out from behind the chair.

"How do I prove myself to someone like that?"

The baby smirks at him. "The first step is to find someone who wants to see you prove yourself."

Hayato feels something tired and stretched-out in his core snap back into place with hope and anticipation. Yes. That's right. He just wasn't getting anywhere because these people weren't...they weren't 'Good Bosses'! That's all. He wasn't working towards nothing. He was just working for something he didn't know about yet. Shamal wasn't a good boss. Those sneering rich bastards weren't good bosses. They were just practice. Establishment. A warm-up before he got to the good stuff.

He gets up, clutching his arm where the bullet hit, and starts climbing out the window again. "Thanks."

"Consider it a favour repaid."

"To who?"

The baby's eyes twinkle as he pulls his fedora down over his eyes. Hayato scowls at the evasion. After a moment, he tries changing tactics.

"Why are you dating my sister, anyway?"

"She has something of mine."

The photograph. A handsome man sipping champagne. _R._

"Oh. Okay."

He escapes out the window, and doesn't even remember why he came in the first place.

* * *

  **\- Promise -**

* * *

 

Hayato is eleven years old when he starts taking jobs.

He's decided not to start begging to be led, focusing on having more practical skills that a Good Boss would want from him. He needs the money for his explosives; the fireworks work for street fights, but they're not infallible, and he's starting to forget some of his techniques.

His first job is a sabotage job for a company trying to build on a rival's territory. The task is a week-long venture in destroying the place over and over again until they reach bankruptcy without killing anyone. He ends up spending up all of his explosives on the venture. It's okay, because the pay is more than enough to buy new material and make more.

Hayato is fantastic at sabotage. He begins experimenting again, the same tricks he had tried to use to impress Shamal. He especially likes experimenting with nitroglycerin. It makes his big explosions even bigger, cutting down on the required explosives needed to complete jobs. Soon he's elevated off the streets and into a small, lower-income apartment that he quickly fills with plans and studies and experiment after experiment, along with a small garden on the balcony.

He still cycles plants around the city, if only for the sake of those left behind. He's getting pretty good at navigating rooftops and back streets, and now that he's got his explosives, he actually starts hearing nicknames like  _Smoking Bomb Hayato_  firsthand. It's exhilarating. He loves having a reputation. He feels awesome. He buys cool-looking jewelry and cooler-looking clothes so everyone knows he's a total badass on sight.

One day he takes a job to completely blow out the Vongola's construction shell company, and the Vongola nearly kills him in retaliation.

They're one of the most powerful mafia organizations in the world and they're dragging him down halls, promising that he's going to die for his insolence, and Hayato keeps a stiff upper lip with a cigarette firmly lodged between his teeth. He sucks in hot acid chemical smoke and prays he'll survive this folly. He hasn't reached far enough yet. He was so close.

He meets with an old man with a kindly smile and a bushy mustache, having tea in the garden. He gestures at Hayato to sit. Hayato does. He doesn't cry. He doesn't do that anymore. He's strong now. He tries sucking deeply from his cigarette and blowing it out through puckered lips with the stick between two fingers like he's seen on TV, hoping it makes him look aloof and unaffected.

"Hello, Hayato. I've heard quite a few things about you."

Hayato sniffs and nods. He blames the way his eyes water on the smoke he just blew out.

"Gaining enough skill to nearly complete an attack on the Vongola at the age of eleven...quite the untapped potential we've let run around," the man says. Hayato takes a deep breath. Are the Vongola going to ask him to join them?  _Yes_!

"I...I needed the practice," Hayato says, intentionally deepening his voice, hoping he sounds really cool.

The old man chuckles. "I'm sure you did. But it's quite reckless, doing work like that. You still have the ability to turn back, you know."

"I won't," Hayato says desperately, "I want to be stronger, I want to be in the mafia!"

"I suppose nothing can convince you otherwise," the old man sighs.

Hayato looks down at his hands and looks away, eyes tracing over the windows. One of them features an overweight man with black hair with a frumpy blond kid with overlarge glasses balanced on his arm. He looks exhausted, but then he looks up through the window, and his eyes meet with Hayato's, but they skate over to the old man and crinkle with happy warmth. He waves, and the old man waves back.

It's a tiny gesture totally unrelated to everything Hayato wants in life, but he suddenly feels very, very sad.

"If you manage to go long enough without that determination and hopefulness being stained, I'll be happy to see you come into our Famiglia," the man says softly. "But I really would rather you look into a normal life, free from the chains of this world."

Hayato nods quickly. He feels sick in ways only Bianchi has managed until now. He can't even feel happy about the promise, the way the old man seems to act just the way Reborn said a boss should. He just wants to go.

"Can I leave?"

"Of course. Good luck, young Hayato. If you ever try to attack Vongola or its allies to such a degree again, I  _will_  have you killed."

Hayato closes his eyes, nods, and exits. He manages to make it to his apartment before he bursts into tears.

* * *

  **\- Break -**

* * *

 

The first time Hayato kills someone, it's an accident.

Of course, he's sabotaging things with explosives, it was bound to be dangerous. He was sabotaging mafia enterprises, which was twice as dangerous. It was bound to happen eventually, but he still feels nothing but terror when he sees a man topple from the scaffolding and, against the backdrop of a cloudless blue sky, fall fall fall until he meets the bright, hot pavement with a sickening  _crunch_.

Hayato flees to the streets, too scared to go back to his apartment. He later finds out this was a great idea, because he's a wanted man now. He killed someone pretty well-liked in his famiglia, and now that famiglia wants retaliation. He's trapped.

So he goes to his sister.

Bianchi is kind, even as he wants to vomit at her touch, Bianchi is understanding, even though he refuses to put anything she gives him into his mouth, Bianchi is reasonable, even though he curls up into the couch cushions and only looks up at her through his hair.

"It's just the next step, Hayato," she says earnestly, and Hayato listens for a way out. She looks at him with terrible, terrible love he'll always be terrified of. Love he'll never be able to feel safe in. Love he can only trust to be destructive.

" _You have to kill them before they kill you._ "

* * *

  **\- Chance -**

* * *

 

Hayato is thirteen years old and an accomplished hitman.

He's given up on the Vongola family even touching him with a ten foot pole. He's nothing but danger and hatred and pure unrestrained force. He trains his body up, forgoes quick feet for raw strength. He abandons his plants to rot, but sometimes he'll pass by them and see they're still thriving. Sometimes he'll see new crops in places he's never planted them. It's a little like a legacy.

The jobs are pretty frequent. It got easier once that Famiglia after his head  _'mysteriously disappeared'_. Without having to deal with all of them at once, he managed to stretch his legs, work up to start taking jobs. With Bianchi's starting push, he ended up doing pretty well on his own. He doesn't even have to watch the targets die. Time bombs, bombs through the windows, all his little tricks with gunpowder and plastic explosive and nitroglycerin used to their greatest potential.

Some people think his indirect way of killing means he's weak at hand-to-hand. He makes sure to prove them wrong. He pushes himself to be faster, alternating between lighting the wicks of his dynamite with his cigarettes and lighting matches so fast all they see is a blur of one hand over the other, tests out how many dynamite he can hide on his body without them seeing their outlines, how fast he can pull them out from their hiding places, how many he can pull out at once. His current limit is a juggling twenty.

He's not sure why he keeps moving forward. Maybe because he doesn't know how to go back anymore.

He's thirteen, and it's summer again, the time of the year things always go to hell. He's barely surprised when the CEDEF approaches him.

The  _Consulenza Esterna Della Famiglia_ , or rather, the External Famiglia Advisors. An independent organization that works closely alongside the Vongola, mainly dealing in the business of information and resource management. Hayato has no idea what the hell they want with them, considering he hasn't touched a single Vongola member or any of their allies, but he goes along with them anyway.

When he meets with the Vongola's Young Lion and the leader of the CEDEF, and he claims that he wants Hayato to befriend his wayward son, he  _is_  surprised. Asking an assassin for help? In making his kid more socially well-adjusted? Hayato can see the truth of it in the worry lines and the strain on his face, but it's still ridiculous. Why involve a hitman with someone as random as a well-to-do mafia name's kid? It's not like the CEDEF is an inherited position.

_"You're about the same age, and have a nationality – and language – in common."_

Hayato doesn't get it.

_"He could use a tutor. He really is harmless."_

It doesn't mean anything.

_"It'll open doors for you. I promise."_

It's all white noise.

Hayato closes his eyes and exhales smoke. As far as he can tell, the only real reason to send Hayato all the way to Japan is to get rid of him without killing him. It's a pain in the ass. It's pretty much the ultimate end for an assassin who was never quite good enough to keep himself afloat.

_Fuck it._

"I'll do it."

The briefing is quick. He's given a folder and asked to memorize the contents. It's pretty easy, considering over half of it is censored.

Tsunayoshi Sawada, Iemitsu's son. Below average grades, clumsy, disorganized, erratic eating patterns, doesn't get a lot of sleep, has only one friend (possibly girlfriend), redefines the meaning of worthless. Recently started hanging with some sort of gang, though which kind is unclear. Natural hair colour is black. Natural eye colour is brown. Current hair colour is brown. Current eye colour is brown. Is small enough to be mistaken for a fifth-year elementary school student. Keeps to himself. No known hobbies. No known relationships beyond his mother and his female associate; good relationship with both. Known flight risk; likely locations upon disappearance are the playpark, internet cafe, manga cafe, and local karaoke box. Aggressive in intersocial behaviour but submissive in conflict. Most frequently vanishes after severe conflicts; likely a stress reaction. Not really a big spender, but constantly has money on his person. Fine with handing out large amounts of money to random strangers when asked, assumed that the habit of collecting money has less to do with stinginess or a desire to spend it at once than it has to do with the money required to stay in various businesses while disappearing, implying reasonably good planning and control. Seems to get in combat situations now and then; performs poorly, but doesn't exhibit any stress at most of these interactions. Any combatants that trigger a vanishing episode are immediately  _'corrected'_. Mental health is assumed strong.

All in all, a really damn weird kid. He sounds like the worst kind of coward, if Hayato has to be honest. A pathetic rat that only knows how to slink away. He knows how to take care of their type.

Next is the reason the kid is in Namimori to begin with; all the resources devoted to protecting him. It is then Hayato is struck with the realization that he has made a terrible, terrible mistake. Or success. He is too surprised to tell which.

First is the retirees, people who have claimed Japan's neutral territory to settle down and live independent lives. In exchange for keeping their location secret, they've agreed to watch Sawada Tsunayoshi and report on his life, while keeping undesirables away from the city.

Next up on the power ladder are three undisclosed assassins. One is exceptionally skilled but has abandoned their craft, one lives in isolation but likes Namimori enough to kill anyone trying to kick up trouble, and one doesn't need to be censored because the CEDEF knows absolutely nothing about them beyond the fact they live in the area and don't mind helping the Vongola out. 

Following that is the local yakuza, which agreed to an exclusive relationship with the Vongola when it comes to Namimori, meaning it’s hard as fuck for the average mafioso to actually get in there. Basic local precautions. The name of the group isn’t listed, but the stats are, and they look huge. Both Tsunayoshi and the mother are protected under this clause.

The highest level of protection is easily the most bizarre sheet, if only for the lack of info. It's literally just a timeline of birds. Beginning in ' _China, 431 C.E._ ', there has been a series of birds spanning across time and nations. There's a basic pattern to their timelines; they're usually isolated for anywhere from twenty to fifty years before being overlapped by another bird for roughly thirteen to eighteen years, at which point either the older bird or the newer bird's line expires. It seems timelines only expire once a new bird supersedes an older bird. Hayato has absolutely no fucking clue what he's looking at. He squints at the very end; it looks like for the past fifteen years, the bird timeline has been running in overlap mode with the  _'wren'_  being taken over by the _'skylark'_.

Besides the bird thing being kind of weird, Hayato suddenly understands they are not trying to get rid of him. There are  _way_  too many resources being focused on hiding and protecting this kid for it to be a dead end job. For whatever reason, he's important. They are genuinely trusting him with a task, promising a good position in a powerful organization if he pulls it off. He's...actually getting a chance.

Completely by accident.

Well, okay then! If they want to see what he can do, he'll do the hell out of it! He'll destroy this kid if it means he has the opportunity to get out of his rut, to mean something, to prove himself to these people, prove how useful he can be, how much they should all regret ever underestimating him, how much they should regret turning away that wild little eight-year-old with the innocence and ignorance still bright in his eyes.

"Is that all you need?"

"Yeah." Hayato pulls the cigarette out between two fingers, blows out the smoke easily, and grins. "When do I leave?"


	10. The Willpower Of The Departing

 

The massive metal door opens with a wicked squeal and a bone-shaking grating against the cement floors. The room beyond it is pitch black, lit only by the bright florescent lights from the entrance. Somehow, it doesn't quite penetrate the darkness. Shadows of shelves and oddly-shaped objects litter the barely-visible edges of the small allowance of light, creating an erratic silhouette.

A small toddler-like figure mottled with scars steps into the room and scowls.

"Turn on the lights."

At her order, the lights of the vault flicker on, revealing massive objects covered in tarps, cabinets, shelves labeled with notes that barely make sense containing objects of a purpose that are even harder to divine, small vaults, glass cases, paintings, and a bunch of crap on the ground that was slated to be sorted tomorrow evening.

And hanging from the ceiling, dozens of blue cords, dotted with black bumps like the thorns on the stem of a rose.

"A skimming of thorns," the man behind her sighs.

"What did he take?" The toddler asks.

"Scrolls." The man approaches one of the cabinets and yanks out a drawer. Sure enough, there is a mould designed to hold six scrolls, and it is very conspicuously missing three of them.

The toddler jumps up to get a good look, and clicks her tongue when she sees what was taken. "Map, lore, and tech. Everything he needs to properly investigate. How the hell did he even know about these?"

"Either CEDEF or Vongola, but beyond that, it could be anyone. I'll have to launch an official investigation, get Woodruff on the job." The corner of his mouth tilts up. "At least this will give Basil some on-the-job work experience."

"Hm. At least. You think he'll be able to do anything with the scrolls?" 

"Three generations have tried it, and nothing. I doubt it. Still, he's a pretty hefty threat, and this is Vongola property he's messing with. He needs to learn that they're off-limits. I'll be taking the earliest flight to Japan." The man gives the drawer a shove, rolling it shut. 

"Visiting your family?"

"Ha. I wish. If I could squeeze in time, it would only be two or three days, but I doubt it'll be that easy. Even if I could make safe time, only one of them will be happy to see me." The man scratches his head and sighs. "I was always told to watch out for letting your kid grow up without a firm father figure, and now I'm reaping what I sowed."

"The town is only two hours out, you know."

"I'd rather not, Lal." The man smiles weakly at her. "I'm the kind of person who can only move or settle. There's no point in visiting if I'm just going right out the door again." 

She sighs and looks up at the thorned cords stretched across the ceiling. The sight makes her feel exhausted. This conversation makes her feel exhausted.

"For someone who won't shut up about his family, you sure are ready to leave them be, Iemitsu."

Sawada Iemitsu rubs the stubble on his chin. "Mm. I guess you could say that."

 

* * *

 

Kyouko spreads herself out on her bed, unwilling to get up, even though she knows it’s Monday. Ever since she had gone to visit Koyama, she’s been feeling bone-tired, like she had burnt out all of her energy at once. It might have something to do with the Koyama boy, but it also may have something to do with how badly she was overextending herself that day. She doesn’t know the answer. She doesn’t want to know the answer. She wants to lie down all day and pretend the world isn’t moving on without her.

Unfortunately, Ryouhei exists.

He bursts into her room, yelling “IT’S TIME TO MOVE”, wielding a backpack full of enough equipment to survive the wilderness for two months.

“You’re going to a town, you know, they have restaurants,” Kyouko squints.

Ryouhei pauses, not sure what she’s talking about at first, but then looks at his backpack. “Oh! Right! I decided I would camp out too!”

“…Why?”

“Endurance training! And so I can add the distance between me and everyone else to my run, so I can warm up before I get Tsuna to start training those abdominal muscles!” Ryouhei slaps his own rock-solid stomach as an example. “He can’t run as much as I can if his rib’s broken, right?”

“Aww. That’s really sweet of you, Onii-san,” Kyouko yawns. She slides languidly out of bed, and winces at how much energy getting up seems to take out of her. Not muscle pain, more like…like a part of her just isn’t _there_ anymore.

Or maybe…not so much _not there_ as it being _less_ , and a part of her that wasn’t there before is _more_. As if she had traded out something huge and old within her for something small and new. And also that old thing was powering her everyday, and now she has to make due with the new thing’s inadequate Kyouko-powering abilities.

_She’s so tired._

Kyouko slinks into the kitchen and slumps down at the table, insensible, but just hungry enough to participate in the world at large. Her mother places her breakfast in front of her, and she barely has the self-control required to refrain from just faceplanting right into it. She fumbles with her chopsticks, squinting uncertainly at her meal, and manages to get a good rhythm going after about five minutes of this.

“You okay sweetheart?” Her dad asks.

“Mmmm,” says Kyouko.

She barely registers what her breakfast tastes like, and wanders back to her room to change. She puts her uniform on backwards on the first attempt, and is distracted on the second go by her father looking something.

“Did you lose something?” Kyouko calls from her room.

“My watch!” He calls back.

“You put it on the couch last night!” She yells back, finally remembering how socks are applied. She stops in front of her bedroom mirror, brushing her hair, and applying a little bit of foundation to smooth out her facial features, especially the hollow look in her eyes. Satisfied, she moves more surely back through the house to grab her things.

“Thanks,” her dad says while she passes her. “But how did you know I was—”

“Hm?” She blinks.

“I just…nothing, honey. You have fun at school.”

“Of course!” Kyouko gives him a one-armed hug and circles around Ryouhei, who is waiting on the front steps. “Have fun, Onii-san!”

“I’ll work hard to the extreme!” Ryouhei shouts, holding his hand out for a high-five. She meets it happily.

“Anyway, you didn’t forget anything, and you don’t need to worry about Tsuna because everyone else will be there! And don’t use your regular training regimen, you’re going to hurt him. Okay, byye!”

“Thanks, Kyouko, I’ll see you later! …But how did you know I was—?”

But at that point, she’s already gone.

 

* * *

 

Hana practically explodes out of bed and gets all her things and food in her stomach in a tornado of activity.

“Marching off to war?” Her dad laughs.

“Ugh, shut UP,” she whines, hipchecking him on the way to the coffee. “I want to make sure everything is ready.”

“You sure you should be having coffee? You’ll be short forever,” her dad teases.

“At least I’ll never be shorter than Tsuna,” Hana growls, pouring herself a cup and a liberally applied pouring of milk.

“Ah yes, the Sawada boy. How is he?”

“Annoying? A brat? Constantly in peril? I don’t know how Kyouko deals with him. If I had to be his friend, I’d tear at my hair out of stress. Oh wait!” She yanks at her hair in an exaggerated motion, making her dad laugh.

“Well, make sure you don’t get any mortal peril too. Don’t pick fights with any realtors, you know the saying. You got everything?”

“Yeah, I packed last night.” She downs the coffee while reviewing the newspaper on the counter, and gives her mother a perfunctory nod when she comes into the kitchen. Her mother hipchecks Hana, completing the cycle of Kurokawa Family Morning Greetings, and pours herself a cup of coffee too.

“It’s so odd seeing you doing something this proactive without Kyouko-chan,” her mother muses from behind her cup. “For a boy?”

“No waaaayyy. All the boys are cute, but like, really, really annoying? I think one of them is a criminal too. I have to protect my friends from their terrible decisions.”

“Well, I hope you have fun in Kyouto,” her dad soothes.

“Of course,” Hana smiles, fingering the paper of her forged permission slip. She had gotten one for everyone else, along with a 5000-yen price tag, so they can afford to buy food for the week. She’ll figure out what do when they’re in town later, but at least they bought it.

Hana ties her hair in a ponytail and bounds over to the sitting room, where she greets their red-belly piranha, Akanbou, with an exaggerated fish face. “Hey, sweet-bean, you gonna eat a fishy for me today?” She uses the net to take a silver feeder fish from the much smaller tank next to him and drops it into his tank. She watches the piranha eye the little fish with apparent disinterest. The silver fish circles the piranha warily, back and forth, until it gets to close and—

A bright silver flash, and the little fish is gone, leaving only Akanbou.

“Good boy, sweet-bean!” Since her hand oils will just wipe the mucus off the fish, which is gross for her and deadly for him, she puts in the butt end of the small net to rub against him once. Then she dashes back into the kitchen to give her dad a quick hug and her mom a peck on the cheek.

“I’m off! I’ll miss you!”

“Good luck, honey,” her mom smiles.

“Bring me back a souvenir!” Her dad grins.

Hana wonders how mad they’re going to be when the school first calls them about her ‘sick week off’.

 

* * *

 

Miki thought he woke up early enough, but apparently not, considering that Gokudera Hayato is outside his house, glaring at his window with his arms folded. Miki waves mildly down at him. Hayato flips him off.

He dashes downstairs, carefully, since their house is cramped and a bit rickety. His mom is still awake anyway, depending on what one would actually consider ‘awake’; she’s sitting at the kitchen table, with her head down and her hair splayed in a halo around her. Miki tip-toes into the kitchen and makes her morning cup of coffee, looking out the kitchen window at Gokudera standing impatiently just outside. He places the cup in front of her, and she grunts in lieu of thanks.

He doesn’t really have time for breakfast, if Gokudera is already here, so he just runs upstairs, gets changed, and grabs his already-packed bags. He doesn’t know when he’ll eat next, though, so…he takes two small mini-loafs of banana bread out of the fridge and stuffs them in a plastic bag to eat on the way.

Gokudera eyes him carefully when he peeks out the door. “You ready?”

“Pretty much. Uhm…” He looks back at his mother, who is slowly coming around to lifting her head high enough to put the coffee in her mouth. “Mom! I’m going to be out for the week! School vacation!”

“Mmmm. Don’t get arrested,” she yawns.

“Is…Is that a real conce-WAH!” His question is cut short by Gokudera grabbing him by the collar and yanking him outside. He flails and screams “I LOVE YOU” at the house, and he can barely hear her ‘love you too’ with how fast Gokudera is hauling him off.

“C’mon, we have to get to the hospital early.”

Miki jerks. “What? The hospital? I can’t go to the hospital! Can’t I just go to the school or bus statio—”

Gokudera glares down at him. Even through the dark filter of his shades, he cuts an imposing figure. Miki squeaks.

“Thought so. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Tsuna is discharged from the hospital just in time to see Hayato attempting to drag a screaming middle-school boy onto the hospital grounds while Hana yells at him to stop being such a goddamn orangutan.

“What,” Tsuna says, mostly to make his presence known, but also because _what_.

“MY DAD SAYS I’M NOT ALLOWED TO GO INTO THE HOSPITAL!” The middle-schooler screams.

“What kind of jackass bans his own kid from the hospital?” Hayato growls back.

“I go to the clinic in the Namimori forest! _It’s never been a problem_!” The boy wails.

“Oh hey, me too,” Tsuna says.

“There’s…a clinic in the middle of the wilderness?” Takeshi asks with furrowed brows.

“Oh yeah, deep in there. Base of the mountain, actually. They have a helicopter and everything. I’m pretty sure it’s 100% illegal, but the doctor’s still trained. He even knows how to do surgery.” Tsuna holds up his arm to show Takeshi the implant scar on his arm. “I used to go annually to get histrelin implants.”

“Hitriwhat?”

“Histrelin. They’re puberty blockers. I was already developing at…eight? Eight. Eight-ish.”

Takeshi opens his mouth, looking perplexed, and Tsuna waits for _‘why would you start puberty at age eight’_ , to which the answer is _‘no idea, but it probably has something to do with tumours because the doctor kept shooting concerned I’m A Surgeon Looks at my mom’_ , but instead Takeshi says “so why are you so small, then?”

Tsuna kicks him in the shins, and goes over to Hayato’s screaming match with the random unidentified kid and Hana so he can spend his time with _civilized company_.

The kid, much like Hayato, is wearing the Koyama chouran, though he wears it like a class rep, all perfectly pressed and spotless and carefully buttoned up. His hair is bleached blond and he’s wearing shades, but he looks about as threatening as a trembling newborn kitten.

Takeshi can’t take a hint, so he just follows Tsuna along and stops right next to him. “Hey, Miki, right? From yesterday? You changed your hair!”

The student, Miki, touches his head self-consciously. “U-Uhm…hello? I…that is, the boss, he told me to…he said I needed to make. Uhm. More of an impact?”

“The students at Koyama can smell chickenshit. Needed to throw them off,” Hayato says.

Hana rolls her eyes and examines Miki closely. “Who _is_ this. Did you kidnap this poor boy? Is that why he looks like he’s made out of tears and the fear of the abused innocent?”

“What? No,” Hayato says at the same time Miki mumbles “kind of”.

Hana gives Hayato a knowing look.

“He is a _student_ , and was engaging in _truancy_. I convinced him politely to come back. I’m a perfect gentleman,” Hayato flusters.

Tsuna gives Hayato a knowing look.

“ALRIGHT, I paid him off to spend a day over and locked him in the student council room. But he’s smart, it doesn’t count.”

“I’m sure that sentence somehow made sense in your head, but here in the real world, with real words, I am mostly just scared for you,” Hana groans.

“Hey. HEY. I’m trying to run this place _properly_ , I can’t have kids playing truant, and everyone else would eat him alive. Besides, he’s getting used to it. Barely had any problems!”

Takeshi leans over to whisper into Tsuna’s ear. “One kid came in with a gun.”

“Understandable,” Tsuna says, too exhausted to ask why he even knows about this little factoid. To Hayato, “Udo’s guys still up to taking you down? High schoolers, right? Have you figured out why high schoolers have guns yet? This is seriously concerning to me.”

“D-Don’t worry, Boss! They’re never around for long! Most of them have given up! Never the same bunch twice! I don’t have the resources to run an investigation, but…I’ll figure it out eventually!”

“Are you dragging this tiny trembling baby deer into _gang fights_?” Hana gasps, clutching Miki’s shoulders like an over-protective mother.

“Stop babying him, you’re only making him weaker,” Hayato barks, grabbing Miki by the wrist and dragging him to his side. Tsuna almost thinks he’s going to manhandle him for a moment, but instead he just slings an arm over his shoulder and gives him a quick squeeze. “Miki here is my _secret weapon_.”

“What is he going to do, cry at them? Why are you getting in gang fights with high schoolers with guns, Gokudera? Namimiddle doesn’t have any guns, and the Committee runs the city! _We pay taxes to them during festivals_. What did you _do._ ”

“You know what? _Shut up_. It’s not my fault that Udo guy made the place into a den of evil, and I’ve only just started on it. Besides, Miki is a _genius_. Man of my own kind. Right Miki?”

Miki squeaks.

Gokudera doesn’t appear to notice that he strikes fear in the heart of his companion with every word out of his growly cigarette-scented mouth. “Right! I need bright minds like his in the school if I’m going to reform anything. Besides, the actual student body isn’t starting anything, it’s all Nami West.”

“I should probably call that in,” Tsuna realizes. He pulls the Device from his pocket and starts tapping in a message to Kusakabe, noting from the corner of his eye that Takeshi looks…oddly wary. Oh well. Maybe Takeshi is afraid of technology. He seems traditional enough for it.

Hana continues to be unimpressed. “So does he use that brilliant intelligence for anything, or are you just dragging him around as a meat shield?”

“Excuse me, I’m easing him in gently. Why do you have to assume I’m always doing things brashly,” says Hayato, who still looks like a delinquent stereotype, and seems perfectly oblivious to this. God help Tsuna, this guy lives in his house. No one must know.

Hana runs her fingers through her hair with an exhausted sigh. “Okay, better question; are you just adding to your collection of tiny, weak little boys you are recklessly endangering, or is there a point to bringing this guy with us?”

“Technically I endangered Hayato,” Tsuna remarks, still typing. The ice pack in his shirt sags a little without the support of his hand.

“Of course you did. You’re you,” Hana bites back.

“I’ll have you know, Miki is my,” and his mouth forms around the syllable for _‘secretary’_ , Tsuna can see it when his eyes flick up, but then Hayato sees Hana’s unimpressed look and becomes horrendously offended by it, and so instead he smirks and says “vice president of the student council.”

“What,” says Hana.

“What,” says Tsuna.

“What?” Whispers Miki.

“Haha, congrats!” Says Takeshi.

“You can’t appoint some tiny dweeb a position that high for having good grades, you chainsmoking orangutan!” Hana snaps.

“Good grades? Yeah? _Watch this._ Miki, Translated Mafia World History Seventh Form, chapter four, page thirty!” Hayato declares.

Miki flinches away, but his head tilts up and his face goes slack in a way that suggests he’s looking up at the sky as he tries to remember something. After a moment, he straightens. “Topic: The Evolution and Innovation of the Criminal Underworld. Text: To the outside eye, one could say that the inadequacies of the resources in 1812 Sicily was the root of all mafia, but in reality, it was the child had consumed its mother. In 1863, the mafia as a structure of organized crime began to spawn from multiple factions of vigilantes and private security. However, in 1865, they were divided into two ideological groups—”

“Page thirty-three, paragraph two.”

Miki counts with the slightest twitch of his fingers, whispering keywords under his breath, before continuing. “—In 1950, the Sect and the Innovators were defined by renowned inventor Calimero Piccio as ‘the Mafia’ and ‘the Drug-Movers’, in reference to the rise in smuggling activity. In truth, both sides were involved in the smuggling of illegal contraband, narcotics especially, but after this definition grew in popularity, trafficking activity in the Innovators plummeted, leaving—”

“Paragraph four.”

Miki doesn’t even pause this time. “In 1992, the Mafia cracked down on trafficking entirely as a concept. The Giglio Nero Famiglia funded the construction of famed amusement park and resort Mafia Land in order to further separate the groups. In the ultimate fallout, the constant reference to the black market and the pressure the mafia put on it had forever marked the Sect as the Blackmarket, and it has since become a catch-all for thieves, contract killers, and secular gangs.”

Tsuna raises his eyebrows and feels suddenly way better about both his dad and Hayato rolling with the mafia. Just… _way_ better. Judging by Hayato’s completely obvious sidelong looks, that might have actually been the point. That, or he’s trying to get Tsuna to warm up to the idea of going to a mafia theme park during summer break. Both are equally likely.

More importantly, why was their first reaction to ‘bad criminal scum aren’t cool and we need to kick them out’ just ‘let’s build an amusement park’? That’s the most Kokuyou think Tsuna has ever heard.

“Why do you have a school textbook all about the mafia?” Hana asks. _An even better question_.

“I’m from Italy,” Hayato says, like this explains anything at all. “Anyway, Miki is the master of rote memorization, so it’s useful to take him everywhere. This skill is _more valuable than gold_.”

“It takes me about two days to memorize a chapter, and I can only retain it for about a week and a half,” Miki says with a one-shouldered shrug, but his cheeks are red with the praise.

“The whole first year is going, he’s just sticking to me,” Hayato finishes.

Tsuna frowns. “Going where?”

Everyone but Miki turns to look at him in sudden agitation and laser-like intensity, and that’s only because Miki was already agitated and looking at him.

“…Nowhere. But your tutor is obviously a danger to both himself and others. Come on, we’re going to take a detour before I take you out for breakfast.”

“You’re…paying for breakfast?” Tsuna feels weirdly offended by this.

“Your breakfast. Gokudera can pay for himself.”

Gokudera snorts loudly at her.

Tsuna frowns up at Takeshi. “Weren’t you waiting for something? Something that necessitated you sneaking into the hospital?”

“I was supposed to make sure you were here so Hana could take you to breakfast!” Takeshi grins.

Tsuna feels the sting of offense worsen. “Why would I not be here?”

“You’re known for not doing what you’re told?” Takeshi suggests mildly.

…True. “Well, that’s fine then. Let’s go…eat food.”

“Detour first!” Hana adds.

“Let’s go detour on our way to eat food,” Tsuna amends. Internally though, he watches the trio (and Miki) carefully.

Something fishy is going on here.

* * *

 

Kusakabe Tetsuya has just realized that there is something wrong with Kyouya.

Of course, there is always something wrong with Kyouya, because the boy was raised in the most counterintuitive way conceivable, and he has spent years of his life submerged by self-justification and whatever it is up with his brain that no one in the house thinks they ought to diagnose. Personally, Tetsuya thinks Kyouya would not actually care if someone told him he had some sort of disorder, because he’d immediately assume that it’s _him_ who thinks properly and everyone else who’s wrong, because that’s just how his head works.

That arrogance and entitlement has been a despair-inducing roller coaster for the past few years, because Kyouya has his worldview challenged very, very often, as one would expect with the average pre-adolescent child. However, unlike the usual proud, entitled pre-adolescent child, he accepts things as they come. While _loathing_ being wrong. Seeing as he can’t actually accept new worldviews and be perfectly right at the same time, he’s known for peculiar mental acrobatics — some of which Tetsuya has helped him with — and as a result, he’s always had a slight presence of complete and utter absurdity. He has spent a long, long time not making any sort of logical sense.

Middle school has been easy, though. Tetsuya has been enjoying middle school. Kyouya has reduced his worldview to one extremely simple, un-unchallengeable base note that will probably serve him well in the future; Kyouya is the top of the food chain, and all who challenge him and his rules will have the snot beaten out of them. Pretty easy to understand.

He’s even stopped getting so wary and self-conscious about sparring, which took all of _five years_ to work him out of. Originally, Tetsuya would have to trick him into it, but nowadays he can just say ‘spar’ and Kyouya would imperiously allow the activity. He even enjoys it, if the obscure metaphors he spouts are any indication. It’s refreshing how easy Kyouya has gotten. Five years. Five years of hell, and now Kyouya is easy. _Tetsuya is so proud of him._

So of course it couldn’t last. And now there’s something wrong with Kyouya.

He didn’t notice at first. He’s been busy being The Eternal Senpai, holding his position as a third year so long that he may as well come with the school at this point. While Kyouya is a commendable boss, he’s not particularly social or good at organizing large groups of people, and so the job of middle management is run purely on Tetsuya’s power. A leadership position isn’t really what he expected to get out of taking over the family business of raising Kyouya, but it’s…nice.

The new recruits are all manageable, though Tetsuya has been careful with them. The one he was most concerned about was Sawada Tsunayoshi, who appears to be the single creepiest human being he’s ever met, including ten-year-old Kyouya, who actually — and he will never repeat this to another soul — hid in the koi pond for two hours to catch a deer and try to disembowel it with his teeth. (And succeeded. And got sick for a week.) Sawada, though, is creepy in a more subtle way. Tetsuya has no idea how to explain it other than he seems like…like _he doesn’t have any body language_ , if that makes sense. He’s a tiny little human template. If you beat him up, tease him, any of that, he just bounces back, unaffected, blank, not even human enough to seem numb.

Still. Manageable. If you get pushy with him, he seems to shake it off and engage more, and he takes to positive conditioning well. Tetsuya wonders if Sawada just has an especially weird way of being awkward and unsure, holding back purely out of discomfort. It would certainly explain why the school idol feels the need to defend his honour every waking minute of the day.

Tetsuya might have been a little too concerned with Sawada. That might have been it. He just wanted to see what made him tick, make sure the rest of the Committee saw how harmless he really is, keep the people outside of the Committee from assuming they can skewer him because he’s about 140 centimetres of quietly trembling twigs, that sort of thing. The other two newbies tried to show off and take advantage of their new power, but Kyouya already beat them down for it, so, not really his problem. Sawada though. Needs a lot of focus.

What he’s trying to say, is, he’s slacked off, got obsessed with the newest model of ‘small antisocial creepy child no one else can stand who has no refined understanding of social behaviour’, and now Kyouya has spent all night carefully researching hippos.

He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know where he got the books. He doesn’t know how long he’s been at it, specifically. For all Tetsuya knows, he woke up in the dead of night and suddenly decided he _needed_ to know more about hippos. It’s happened before, when he was thirteen — he’d woken up at one in the morning, sprinted down the hall (waking Tetsuya in the process), and started consuming every book he could on carnivores in a fit of frantic anxiety. It’s just something Kyouya tends to do when he gets his worldview changed.

But what on _earth_ could change his worldview in _under a day_? It’s usually a slower burn than this, a week of anxiety before the final detonation.

Kyouya is fifteen now, not exactly a child, so he’s better at self-control, especially in presentation. He looks very calm, with his thumb set in his mouth, alternating between sucking and nibbling, depending on what his oral fixation demands at the moment. There’s irritated, swollen bite marks at the base, but he hadn’t drawn blood, from what Tetsuya can see. The other hand has a trailing finger that tracks down the page to help him read faster. He looks, for all the world, like he had only gotten over twenty books about hippos to read just five minutes ago, but there are bags under his eyes and his hand is trembling slightly, so Tetsuya knows it’s been a few hours at least.

“We need to be in school in an hour,” Tetsuya says with premature exasperation.

“Hn,” says Kyouya.

“You need to eat.”

Kyouya frowns and glares at his own trembling hand. It does not stop trembling. He glares even harder. It continues to tremble. Tetsuya notes there’s bite marks on the edge of that hand’s wrist. He was biting a _lot_. Tetsuya would unearth the old biting toys from the storage closet if he didn’t know Kyouya would be hideously offended by it.

“I’ll go get a bowl of rice,” Tetsuya sighs, exasperation now clearly justified.

He fetches breakfast and brings it into the library. Kyouya has, at least, piled up most of the books and moved his current book to the table, legs folded under him in a traditional seiza posture. He takes the bowl without looking up and starts eating, staring intensely at the book.

“…Why hippos?” Tetsuya asks carefully.

Kyouya makes a mild, non-committal sound. After finishing a page in a dead silence punctuated only by the sound of his chopsticks clinking against his bowl, he glances up at Tetsuya with a distant expression. “Cats.”

God dammit.

“…Yes?”

Kyouya eats a little more, soundlessly snarling at his own hand for making the chopstick chatter along the side of the bowl. “…Cats own their household.”

Oh, good, he’s already started justifying himself. Tetsuya considers the context. If he had to guess, someone brought up the fact that cats are meat-eaters. If anything, Tetsuya is surprised that this hasn’t come up before.

“That’s right.”

Kyouya stares unseeingly at his hippo book. “…Hippos are…herbivores.”

Tetsuya lets him plot out his next sentence. Kyouya has a small tell, for that. His eyes slid around about two times in a cycle when he’s trying to get a long and elaborate thought planned out. Kyouya can speak at length with simple concepts, and he does, but more vague, shapeless concepts — especially with his metaphors — need a loading period.

“…Hippos are dominant in their territory. They’re ruthless, and known for their kills. They kill for the sake of it, and to defend what is theirs.” He frowns, rapping his fingernails against the table idly. Then he smirks to himself, and says “except pygmy hippos,” like an in-joke. Tetsuya is used to Kyouya spawning in-jokes in the confines of his head nigh-constantly, so he ignores it and lets him continue. “…The aggression is…severe. They don’t need to be prodded. It’s reckless. Not uniform. They exude their power in existing. They’re social. Cooperative. They’re…”

Kyouya’s expression pinches. “Carnivores need to work together to crush them. Most don’t bother.”

Tetsuya’s brain kicks into overdrive. Why is this bothering Kyouya? Kyouya’s existence isn’t _defined_ by his metaphors, and if he compared someone to a hippo, he can usually correct to ‘I like this one’ and ignore it. If he was mocked for his metaphors, he’d be justifying himself by now. His base ideology is so incredibly simple that he could make _anything_ fit. Why is it bothering him? What the hell happened? How can Tetsuya fix it? When was the last time Kyouya had taken to a concept with such incredible gravity? How offended would Kyouya be if Tetsuya took a commemorative photograph?

Kyouya tilts the thumb out of his mouth and bites down on the flesh just below the joint. It’s the closest he’ll allow himself to anxiety nowadays. Kyouya hates the idea of experiencing an emotion that close to fear.

“…It won’t fit anymore. All it does is disorganize the webs and chains.”

Tetsuya abruptly straightens, realizing, with a tinge of horror, why Kyouya is so hesitant to dismiss this new information.

He… _He doesn’t want to use animal metaphors anymore._

Tetsuya has to sit down, and his breath comes in short. No, that can’t…that can’t be it, because Kyouya learned the metaphors from his father, and anything from his father cannot be removed, only worked around. Manners, animals, battle prowess, they’re part of his core. They replaced everything in Kyouya’s mind that might spiral out into independence. That’s not…that’s not right.

Tetsuya places his face in his hands and negotiates with himself. Animal metaphors are upsetting Kyouya. Kyouya cannot reject animal metaphors.

Therefore, he wants to use _different_ animal metaphors.

“Food webs,” Tetsuya starts, but Kyouya immediately misunderstands, listing with a reserved eagerness, “primary-secondary-tertiary consumers, consuming the energy of the producer.”

“I- yeah. Well, they don’t apply to people, all the time. You know that, it’s how you’ve been using them, right? They apply to…to, you know, populations. Classifications. You’re a tertiary, aren’t you?”

Kyouya’s gnawing increases, but he looks interested. His eyes are twitching around the room. Sleeplessness, maybe, but…he seems a little too desperate.

“And hippos would be the secondary. That only means they’re the secondary level of the energy transfer. It doesn’t say anything about their power. As far as territory goes, it’s the crocodiles who are at the top, but that’s only because they prey on secondary consumers. Not necessarily hippos.”

The biting lets out, and he goes back to nibbling on his thumb joint. He’s doing it faster, now. Tetsuya feels a well of anticipation. Or dread.

“…In terms of…in terms of power, it’s individual. It’s simpler to just pick a small biome, and within that…” He rapidly thinks of something that will appease Kyouya quickly, because he just realized that Kyouya is never this frantic unless he’s _already anxious to begin with._ “…A good apex predator is a panther. How about the panthers in Asia, the leopards? They’ll eat insects, birds, and elands alike. Because they’re at the top.”

“Because they’re at the top,” Kyouya mumbles. His teeth clench down on his thumb, _hard_. Tetsuya slowly brings his hand down to the retractable staff hidden in his uniform.

“The panthers are at the top, so all others are below them. Herbivores. Secondary consumers. There’s no difference.”

Kyouya looks at the book, though he’s definitely coming around to the idea.

“They’re the apex predator. Their ruling is absolute.”

Kyouya’s breathing is coming in short, now, and his eyes are tracing around the room rapidly, and the sight of Kyouya being unsettled is so excruciating that Tetsuya can’t hold his attentions anymore and he snaps to look at the door. “Is someone here?”

He shouldn’t have moved so suddenly; Kyouya panics, leaps back, and looks torn between fury and confusion, though Tetsuya can’t tell at _what_. He’s hyperventilating, and his eyes are fever-bright. Fight or flight response. That’s unusual. That’s very unusual. Tetsuya doesn’t like unusual with Kyouya, just like Kyouya doesn’t like unusual with literally anything else.

Kyouya seems to know exactly what’s setting him off, though, because he flies across the room to the cabinet and tears open the drawer so hard it goes flying to the floor. He dives on it like a wildcat onto prey, taking out a roll of bandages, which he fumbles to wind around his hands, covering the bite marks all along his hand and wrist. Both his hands are shaking. He looks more and more determined the more he works.

“I have three more,” Kyouya tells Tetsuya with a deadly whispered calm that isn’t in his body language.

…God _dammit._

A Visit. He’s been at Kyouya’s side for five years and he’s never experienced a Visit, but his dad has told him how dangerous they can be. His dad was caring for Kyouya back when the family was together, and he describes the phenomenon as pure hell. He has no idea what Kyouya thinks of it, but it’s probably nothing good.

He wonders if he can call his father for help, but if Kyouya is already having a reaction, it’s probably too late. The best bet is to hide. He takes the bowl and stashes it in the cupboard while Kyouya claws at the wall paneling, ripping it away hard enough to dent the opposite wall, and takes out heavy-duty, non-retractable tonfas from the hidden shelf.

Kyouya backs up against the wall and stares at the door. Every so often, he’ll let out a full-body shudder, but to his credit, he doesn’t look afraid. If anything, he looks angry. Probably at his own body for _daring_ to activate his fight-or-flight response to begin with.

“Three more,” he mumbles. “Three is enough. Three more.”

Of all the times, it is _now_ that Tetsuya gets a text.

He checks it, easing towards the corner of the room. It’s Sawada. He says the West High kids still have guns. The hell are his men doing, they still have guns? _They should have taken the guns already._

His eyes flick to the door. He can’t feel it yet. He might be able to make a break for it in time. He just doesn’t want to leave Kyouya.

“Three more,” Kyouya says to Tetsuya.

 _Nothing’s going to happen to me,_ he means.

Tetsuya lets out a steadying breath. “…Namimori West still has guns.”

“Take care of it,” Kyouya nods.

Tetsuya dives out of the room and tries to maintain a steady walking pace the best he can. The air feels thicker. Oppressive. Getting closer, then. He can’t believe he’s been so _stupid_ , that he didn’t notice from Kyouya’s erratic behaviour alone. He must have been having a reaction from the moment the plane touched down in Japan. Which, of course, would be in the middle of the night. That kind of sudden, inexplicable wariness would have confused him. The research was only making it worse, scratching the wrong itch.

Tetsuya gets to the back door, pulls it open, and walks as firmly as he can to the door across the garden. The pressure escalates in severity, sending shockwaves of fear through him. He tugs the door open, and swallows down the urge to start hyperventilating, holding his hand against his chest to feel his heart beat against his fingers. He feels like the very atmosphere is trying to choke him.

And then it hits him, as the mere urge to crawl out of his skin and end his own life.

He gasps and shudders violently as every instinct in his body is repulsed all at once. A sort of morbid dread mixed with carnal terror oozes over him like syrup, and he has to fight to keep his breakfast inside his stomach. Tetsuya falls into the wall around the estate, breathing coming in harsh, a belated reaction in comparison to Kyouya, but Kyouya isn’t exactly normal. He’s never been. In the same way animals can sense oncoming storms, Kyouya can sense an oncoming Visit; it’s a part of him.

Tetsuya looks at the figure standing next to the door.

It’s a small older woman with her hair in a bun. She smiles placidly at him.

“Is Hibari in? His father has arrived in Namimori.”

Behind her, pure death in mortal form crawls out from the bowels of hell and prepares to settle in his home for the week, and Tetsuya crumbles.

 

* * *

  **BONUS SCENE**

* * *

 

“Everything all ready?” Takeshi’s dad asks, looking over Takeshi’s bags.

“Yeah! I’m all ready for—” Takeshi pauses, trying to remember what fake place Hana made the permission slip for. “…Ky…Kyouto?”

“I know you’re not going to Kyouto,” his dad sighs, ruffling his hair.

“Haha…that obvious, huh?”

“It was a good forgery, but I’ve seen better, and so have you. You should have given her tips.” he shakes his head. “…But as long as you’re still in the prefecture, I don’t mind you going somewhere to cool off. No need to put on any extra pressure.”

“Oh, uh…thanks. Dad.” Takeshi smiles awkwardly.

“Now, if you get in trouble, don’t hesitate to call, and I’ll rush right over. You remember how to bribe cops?”

“Do I… _need_ to know?” Takeshi winces.

“You forgot? What are you going to do if someone frames you up? You’re from out of town. It could happen.”

“Dad, I’m fourteen.”

“It could happen. Now, you can check what kinda type they are if you—”

“Dad.” Takeshi grips his dad’s arm and squeezes it, the smile settling on his face with a faint hint of exasperation. His dad turns pink, and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.

“…Yeah, I suppose you don’t really need to worry about that sort of stuff at your age. Besides, it sounds like at least one of them will know how to get you out of a bind anyway, bribes or not.”

“I’m pretty sure bribing cops is illegal, dad.”

“Breaking laws is a part of growing up in Namimori, son. And remember, all rea—”

“—All realtors are Yakuza,” Takeshi recites with an eyeroll. He has no idea why that bit of wisdom is so prevalent amongst small business owners, beyond the fact that it’s a really bad idea to pick a fight with a realtor, except when they’re trying to poach your land, in which case it is more okay than it usually would be to fight a realtor. His dad fights a lot of realtors, but Takeshi doesn’t own any land, except maybe his bedroom, so the knowledge is basically useless to him.

Maybe he’s going to inherit the restaurant, and then he’ll have to hire a bunch of people who can do battle with the local realtors to run the place while he’s out making the best of his professional baseball career.

“I wonder if Gokudera knows how to cook,” Takeshi wonders aloud.

“Hey, something you can talk about while you’re out there! Good man.” His dad slaps his back.

Takeshi gets up and pulls his travel case along with him. Kyouko planned a two-to-five-day vacation, depending on how long it’ll take to get Tsuna to unwind, so he packed it as full as he could. He figured the first time he’d go traveling like this would be during training camp with his baseball team, but hey, at least Takeshi gets a little practice at packing in now.

“…You’re bringing your bat?” His dad notes with a frown as Takeshi picks up his second bag.

“Uh…yeah, you know. Just in case. My arms are more solid than most people’s, right? So I could do one-handed, as long as I don’t do it long enough to…” To sprain his arm. He’s pretty sure he can’t actually break his arm with just excessive stress, but the reason he got pelted at all was because he had to stop because of his torn muscle.

“Hm. If you need any self-defense, bring your baseballs. Just because you can hit those pitches with a bat doesn’t mean they aren’t vicious when you get one to the eye.” His dad looks at him with an anxious strain of concern, before adding quickly, “and that Kurokawa girl, her mom’s a pretty famous lawyer, so if someone out of uniform tries to arrest you—”

“Hey now, dad, I got it, okay?” Takeshi laughs, swatting at his father.

“It’s the first time you’re going out of town by yourself, I’m allowed to worry! And you’re already…” He grimaces at Takeshi’s arm, still bound in the cast, unmarked.

Takeshi’s smile fades too. Out of everyone he’s ever known, his dad feels like the only person who can really _see_ it. Takeshi isn’t sure what it is that he’s seeing. Raw emotion, the strange black Something in his core, or maybe how much harder maintaining his base note of normality is lately. Whatever it is, his dad can spot it, and that alone makes him feel just strong enough to manage.

He thinks if there are baseball gods, this is their way of telling him to take a little break. He probably owes it to his dad to listen to them.

The clock above them ticks on, loud as hell this late at night. Kyouko’s probably waiting for him.

“Well, it’s about three in the morning, so I gotta go,” Takeshi sighs.

His dad grabs him by the back of the head and pushes him forward so he can place a kiss on his hairline. “You go have fun.”

“Yeah. Thanks, dad. I will.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Cultural Notes:**  
>  _Sweet-bean_ \- The piranha's name is "Akanbou", which means "babyish" nowadays. Hana calls him "anko", which is a sweet red bean paste used in Japanese confections.


	11. The Willpower Of Those Individuals

The detour takes them to a big apartment complex, nestled in a corner of the shopping district right before the residential district. It’s about five storeys, and Hana walks up to it like she’s been there dozens of times. For all Tsuna knows, she likely has.

Hana leans in close to the buzzer when she presses the button and sort of…glares at it while she waits.

Then, a voice, with a wiry sort of huskiness of someone with throat damage, _“Who is it?”_

“It’s Hana. I need… _weaponry_.” She says ‘weaponry’ like most people say ‘moldy 3-year-old lasagna’ while cleaning out their fridge.

“ _Nyorohohohooo,”_ the voice on the other end chuckles, _“finally conceding, Hana-chan?”_

“No, I just feel like I’m going to get shot the longer I hang out with these people, and I want to be able to shoot them first,” Hana drawls.

Tsuna wrinkles his nose.

“ _Ooh, so prickly. Okay, I have a few models from some of my favourite companies, so we can just review—”_

“I am not handling real guns, _oh my god_.”

“ _Stingy. Okay, I’ll find something for you.”_ The buzzer rings, and Hana yanks the door open with petulant frustration. She gives them all a look that tells them that they are _absolutely not allowed_ to follow her in, and then disappears into the building.

“So those guys with guns don’t have _real_ guns too?” Takeshi asks to the group at large.

“Oh no, they’re real. I’m not sure if they have bullets in them yet, most of them go straight to market,” Hayato says distractedly.

Tsuna jerks. “Are you…are you managing _an illegal weapons trade_?”

Hayato freezes and looks very carefully at a nearby telephone pole. Tsuna just stares. People tend to crack if he looks at them long enough.

“By the way, where’s Senpai? I was kinda expecting him to be here.” Takeshi asks, looking around.

“Helping with the…you know,” Hayato shrugs.

“Oh, okay! Man, he seemed really excited. This whole thing sounds like fun!” Takeshi laughs.

Tsuna redirects his attentions to him. “…What whole thing?”

“Uhm,” says Takeshi.

“We’re planning a surprise for you in celebration for you leaving the hospital! We just can’t tell you what it is, because it’s a surprise,” Hayato says quickly.

“Ohhh. So that’s why Takeshi was watching out for me,” Tsuna notes.

Takeshi and Hayato both nod their heads very quickly. Miki has, at this point, retreated to hiding behind Hayato, clinging to his chouran for dear life. Tsuna isn’t exactly certain how Miki feels about Hayato, considering the only emotion he seems capable of feeling at the moment is pure, unrestrained terror. Tsuna would say Hayato cussing at him so much is probably a bad idea, but Tsuna has come out perfectly fine for all Hana and Mochida have insulted him, so really, what does he know.

“She’s taking a while,” Takeshi notes. “She didn’t seem like the type to be into weapons?”

“What is she going to do, leave it to the police?” Tsuna huffs.

Takeshi gives him a blank look. “Y…es?”

Tsuna and Miki both give him mildly disappointed looks. Hayato looks like he’s not sure if he should be disappointed too, but is disapproving on principle.

“Namimori…doesn’t _have_ police officers,” Miki explains quietly. “Not in the traditional sense, at least…It’s just…crossing guards…and…the two officers in the patrol station.”

“What? Seriously? Then who handles like, murders? Domestic disputes? Forensics?” Hayato startles. “The cops in Italy were corrupt, but they were still _there._ ”

“It’s a secular situation. Living in Namimori is hard if you don’t follow the culture, and pretty much all of the city’s structure is based around that. If someone breaks into your house, you don’t call the cops, you call in someone you know. And if you don’t know anyone, the Disciplinary Committee or the local bars send in muscle,” Tsuna explains.

Takeshi blinks. “Huh. Usually my dad takes care of stuff like that.”

“Probably why you don’t know. My mom called the realtor office when I went missing, once.”

“…Realtors,” Hayato repeats flatly.

“All realtors are yakuza?” Takeshi says, a little confused that this isn’t immediately obvious to Hayato. It really should be; you don’t get two yakuza families near Namimori and an underworld structured around land ownership without some sort of insidious bias in civilian career options. Plus, isn’t Hayato in the mafia, or something? He should know about situations like that. Tsuna looked it up; all software companies are mafia.

“The officers do arrests and domestic abuse calls…and, uhm, noise complaints…” Miki mumbles.

“Haha, man! I guess it’s good me and dad are popular in the community, huh?” Takeshi laughs.

“I think that might be the idea.” Tsuna scratches his head, gazing off into the middle distance. “I was kinda into the Underworld when I was younger, like as a hobby, I guess…When I looked up Underworld activity in Namimori, it looks like for a few decades, the entire western half of the city — the residential district and the edges of the small businesses — has been sort of…cult-ish? There’s an isolated, help-our-own sort of feeling to it. It’s changed up in the past twenty years, but the idea of going to a festival still creeps me out.”

“Awww, but stall food!”

Tsuna shakes his head. “I don’t like traditional events. People are more likely to fall back on old habits, like that.”

“Haha, yeah, maybe. You know Hana destroyed someone else’s stall once?”

“What the hell.”

“Some guy from out of town didn’t know the etiquette, just assumed that because there wasn’t an office signup or something, he’d just set up for free? Everyone was really mad, and Hana’s dad got in a fight with him, and she just trashed the thing when the guy wouldn’t pay up. It was really funny!”

Tsuna gestures generally at Takeshi as explanation enough for why going to festivals is a _such a_ _bad idea_.

“Why the hell does she need a weapon if she’s just running around crushing people’s small business ventures?” Hayato asks.

“…Huh. I wonder.” Takeshi scratches his cheek. “Well, I guess people in Namimori don’t usually have guns? Most people around here like swords, and you can run away from those. Or maybe it’s just because she’s afraid of leaving the Namimori west end?”

“Why would she be leaving the Namimori west end?” Tsuna asks.

“Oh- uh- that’s-” Takeshi stutters.

Tsuna doesn’t get to hear his explanation, though, because Hana storms out of the building, clutching a brown paper bag. She looks exhausted with life as a general concept, but still somewhat triumphant.

“My safety has been assured,” she announces.

“You could probably just get a bulletproof vest,” Tsuna deadpans.

“Yeah, but if someone’s shooting at me, I’m obviously going to be pretty mad at them. Take a look!” She digs into the bag and produces a…blue gun? It’s sky blue, and looks like it was made out of several kinds of metal. There’s some obvious signs of handcrafting, like colour warping and little ripples of melted metal around the edges. It looks like something the average student would make in a metalworking class.

“Fighting guns with guns. Rational of you,” Gokudera notes.

“It’s just a test model, so it’s kind of a piece of junk, but it works. It fires water bullets!”

Tsuna frowns. “You mean…it’s a watergun?”

“No, I mean it literally shoots little plastic pellets full of water. I am pretty sure I could break someone’s nose if I fire close enough.” She wags the gun at them. “Since my options are scary reckless dynamite guy and big strong useless lunk with the broken arm, I’m obviously going to need something strong.”

Tsuna glances up at Takeshi, who is looking away from Hana, seeming a little embarrassed. “Takeshi _is_ pretty strong. What the heck did you do to break your arm?”

“I, uh…” Takeshi rubs the back of his head, blushing. “…I was practicing at home, and tore a muscle. I was holding it wrong, and the machine fired on me, so it just…hit me, and kinda broke. Fractured a bit, I mean. I have no idea how I managed that, haha.”

Hana squints at him. “…You…You have a ball machine at home? _Why?_ ”

“The balls at the local batting range don’t go fast enough, and I wasn’t allowed to stay by myself at school,” he shrugs.

Tsuna knows for a fact that the balls at the local batting range are fast enough to give him a black eye and put a crack in his cheekbone. He would very much like to know what the hell kind of balls Takeshi had been expecting to hit. Or why he didn’t automatically assume the balls going faster than the highest setting at the batting range would be going fast enough to break something. What kind of monster _is_ he?

Ah, beyond that… “You’re kinda cool, if you’re hitting balls that fast…”

Takeshi’s face takes on the colour of a lightly bronzed tomato, and his ears flare bright red. “U-uh, well…it’s actually the only speed I can hit them at, so I was kinda cheating…”

“…So basically…” Tsuna squints. “The only reason your batting average has been going down is because the pitches aren’t good enough?”

“Uh…I wouldn’t really say that? Everyone’s trying really hard, and it’s making me let the team down during games…” Takeshi scratches his cheek.

Tsuna holds his fingers to his chin in thought. “Yeah, but it’s not natural to hit balls going that fast. Really, it’s more like…it’s really impressive you’re batting at professional level, and your first response is to try to hit someone’s lower-level pitches. I guess it makes logical sense, considering that level of skill won’t win you any middle school games, but…it’s got a sense of…I don’t know, honour?”

Takeshi stares down at him.

Tsuna blinks up at him.

Takeshi’s eyes slowly, gradually widen, to the point that they’re like light brown saucers. His smile is thin, and his face is completely flushed.

“Are…are you going to be okay?”

“F-Fi-ine!” Takeshi tries to say, but his voice breaks. He coughs and gives Tsuna a more assured smile. “Fine. I’m just…I mean, no one’s ever put it that way before.”

“Don’t be modest. It’s annoying.” Tsuna got that nervous whenever Kyouko complimented him, and everyone hates him now. He turns away to look at Hayato and Hana to check if they noticed. Hayato is trying to grab Hana’s gun, and she’s kicking him away while holding it away from him, like a child trying to monopolize a toy. “Hayato!”

Hayato jumps back and holds his hands up. Unfortunately, Miki was still clinging to the back of his chouran, and he ends up colliding with him. Tsuna is a little perplexed to note how Hayato quickly whirls around and tries to steady Miki so he doesn’t hit the ground. He isn’t really sure how Hayato feels about Miki; he’s ignoring him, on the most part, but also showing him a lot of care, even when it’s not necessary. With Tsuna, Hayato just jumped from pure hostility to pure amiability. Maybe it’s just how he treats underlings?

“S-Sorry Boss! It’s just professional curiosity!”

“Well stop being professionally curious. I’m hungry.”

“R-right, Boss! C’mon.” Hayato grabs Miki around the shoulders and marches him off for a little while before he trusts him to walk by himself. Miki immediately latches onto the back of Hayato’s chouran again. Hayato always wears it open, so Tsuna supposes it’s not a big deal for him, but it’s a little embarrassing to look at.

Hana frowns. “Like a little kid.”

“Weren’t you protecting him just a little while ago?” Tsuna asks.

“Oh, he needs protecting from guys like Gokudera, that’s for sure, but isn’t he embarrassed being so immature? I feel like there’s no _real_ men lately...”

“We’re in middle school?” Says Takeshi.

She sniffs and elbows him in the ribs. Tsuna quickly sidesteps out of range before he’s marked as next on the list.

Hana moves to go after Hayato, but she’s halted by someone coming _flying_ in from just around the corner. Tsuna jumps back and away, and Takeshi just turns curiously, because he doesn’t know what fear is.

A boy their age with copper hair, a plain face, and skewed glasses skids onto the street, clutching onto a canvas bag and looking a little wild around the eyes, stumbles to a stop in front of them. He’s wearing a dress shirt that’s been buttoned up wrong and nice-looking slacks, like he dashed over in the middle of getting ready for school.

He gives them all a shady look, but makes a beeline for the buzzer. He slams his palm into one of the buttons and lets out a strangled _“Miura-san!”_

“ _Oh, BPkitchen-kun! That was fast. Hey, hey, listen, you’ll be fine for the week, right? Roughly a week? I’m sure Hana-chan will have looooots of data by then!”_

“Data for _what_?”

Hana waves the gun at him. “This is your model, isn’t it?”

The boy whirls on her and locks onto the weapon in an instant. He flies to her side and looks the blue gun over, examining it in careful detail. “It _is_. Semi-automatic non-lethal pistol with a .44 magnum shot, and did she _custom-design_ the bullets? I just gave her blueprints! _Yesterday_!”

“You…design weapons?”

“I design lots of things, I just also design weapons because Miura-san thinks it’s cool,” he mutters. “Usually just guitars, honestly.”

“Can you design guitars that are also guns?” Takeshi very wisely suggests.

“Don’t be dumb,” Hana snorts, at the same time the copper-haired boy makes a speculative noise.

“Miura-san…that’s the person who lives up there?” Tsuna asks.

“Yeah. She makes animatronics, but she found my blog, and…” He trails off, seems to realize the situation, and dives after the buzzer again. “Hey, Miura-san! Don’t go misleading people like that! I thought you were in trouble or something! I was worried you were on the run and had to get out town! I packed my bag and everything!”

“ _Such a pure heart! But really, it’s not like this is an Underworld drama or anything…”_ Miura-san’s husky voice croons from the speakerbox.

“Seriously! I was worried! I have school!”

“ _Oh, don’t worry, I took care of it.”_

“You…” Copper-head slams his palm against the intercom. “You took care of WHAT?”

“ _So about a week is fine?”_

“MIURA-SAAAAN! WHAT AM I GOING TO TELL MY MOM?”

“ _Hey, if you give me your home phone number, I can take care of that tooooo!”_

“NO WAY! You’re just going to call me at three in the morning about some project you’re working on! Be more reasonable!”

“ _Ehhh. Then, Hana-chan? Hana-chan can do it, right?”_

The boy whips his head around to look tearfully at Hana, who makes an aborted move to hide behind Takeshi before deciding it is probably not a good idea to shy away from a kid she could almost certainly beat up. She smooths her shirt down, folds her arms, and quirks an eyebrow imperiously.

“It’s probably for the best if you go along with her. The completed model will be finished faster with data, and it’ll be suspicious if you end up missing school for the week while staying at home.”

Tsuna frowns. Is Hana going on a trip? Why?

“This is illegal! This has to be illegal!” Copper-head wails.

“I’m pretty that’s the exact sort of thing that got her enough money to start so many pet projects to begin with,” Hana mutters.

Takeshi grimaces slightly. “Is she doing anything bad?”

“Tax evasion!” Copper-head shouts.

“Racketeering,” Hana deadpans.

“Illegal sale of firearms!” Copper-head eagerly adds.

Tsuna glances at Hayato, who is currently at the end of the street, screaming something incomprehensible at them. Probably telling them to hurry up.

“Metal-stripping?”

“Extortion.”

“Blackmail!”

“Child labour.”

“Pizzo!”

Oh, Tsuna knows that word!

“ _Hey, hey, you don’t need to bully me!”_ Miura-san interjects.

“Adults who coerce poor, innocent children into their vanity projects deserve to be chastised,” Hana sniffs.

“A three-man manzai routine, huh,” Takeshi says with a relieved laugh. He seems to have a threshold for how bad something is before he switches gears and thinks people are just joking around. Tsuna isn’t sure if this is a good thing or not.

“ _A weapon is a weapon is a boy who is in the best position to collect data on the weapon! If you don’t want to collect any data, then return it!”_ The intercom booms.

Hana wrinkles her nose at her gun, and then at Copper-head. They sort of just…make faces at each other, for a moment, and Hana seems to be measuring him up in a way that slightly differs from the way she measures up potential Hot Boy Material. Then she draws herself up with a bit of pride.

“Hmph. What’s your name, BPkitchen-san?” Hana asks.

“U-Uh…Irie Shouichi,” he mumbles.

“Alright. I’m Kurokawa Hana. You can call me…” She pushes her hair back with the back of her hand and smirks mysteriously. “…Miura-san’s most valuable student.”

“E-Eh? Student?” Shouichi jolts. “You mean she’s teaching you how to make stuff?”

“No, she’s teaching me how to fire them. Why do you think she likes guns so much to begin with? She’s prodigal with firearms. And she decided to impart all of her knowledge on me. Why else would she be giving me her valuable work-in-progress weapons?” Hana continues, striking a subtle pose as she does so.

“…But…that’s my design…”

Hana narrows her eyes at him. He jumps back.

“ANYWAY, I’m obviously super important, and she leaves the house basically all of _never_. I think her little sister does her shopping for her. SOOO, obviously the only one who can collect data is you, who is not only the original creator, but smart enough to blog with Miura-san as an equal! Isn’t it natural for you to see your baby come to fruition?”

“But…I have _school_!”

“Yeah, so do I. School ends in like a month. Live your life.” She _really_ wants that gun. Relatable; if this Miura-san is the same person who made the high-density jetstream watergun, Tsuna also wants that gun.

“Where is Hana even going?” Tsuna whispers to Takeshi.

“Vacation,” he shrugs.

“ _School ends in like a month?”_

“Brief vacation.”

Tsuna stares. Takeshi flashes him a winning smile.

Shouichi looks blandly at his bag, then at Hana. His fingers trace around his neck, pulling out a chain, and his face scrunches as he presses a kiss to the object around it. Then he tucks it back in and takes a deep breath. “S-Since…Miura-san already took care of it…”

“Neat! Here, have this form I forged,” Hana pulls a piece of paper out of her bag and hands it to Shouichi cheerfully.

“ _NYOOOOO! I knew my darling Hana-chan would figure everything out! Make sure to use the whole clip, okay? You’ll do it, right?”_

“I got it, I got it! You’re acting like I’ve never used a gun before!”

“ _Well, you haven’t.”_

Hana flushes. “I’ve used BB guns!”

“ _Nyorohohoho, if you say so. Ah, then, I’ll be going back to work. You probably won’t be able to contact me for a few days. Good luck, Hana-chan! BPkitchen-kun!”_

Shouichi skims the form with an exasperated look. “What do you need with 5,000 yen?”

“Food money. Extra supplies. We’ll be camping out.”

Shouichi glances over his shoulder. “Ugh…I have a tent at home, I think…And I can cover at least 2,000 with my allowance…but I’ve been saving it up…”

“Then I’ll meet you at the bus station. Thanks, BPkitchen-kuuun~” Hana croons, dancing away. Tsuna and Takeshi watch her go with mutual disbelief, up until she catches up with Hayato, and then tries to kick him when he says something to her.

“She’s a pretty interesting girl, huh,” Takeshi chuckles nervously.

“Women are scary, but easy to understand, I think,” Tsuna nods.

“Uh…how?”

“Hm? Mmmm…like…the presentation is different, but equating confidence with power…and dependence on charisma to get what they want…And capitalizing on the fear of the opposite sex is pretty useful…Plus getting excited about their proficiency in their favoured skill, right?”

“…Are you comparing Hana to Mochida?”

“Little bit, yeah.”

Hayato screams something and pulls out two fistfuls of dynamite. Hana points her gun at his head.

“…Well, I suppose it’s not a good idea to leave them alone. Your tutor is an interesting guy too, after all.”

“Mm…I suppose that’s also true.”

 

* * *

 

Tsuna reacts about as well as could be expected.

“Why’s my mom here?” He asks, hiding warily behind Takeshi at the sight of the bus station.

“To see you off, Boss,” Gokudera says gravely.

Tsuna isn’t a really expressive guy, but he moves around so little that the fact he’s curling in on himself is emotive enough. “See me…? Isn’t…Isn’t Hana the one going on the trip?”

“She is! With you!”

Takeshi winces as the fear finally cracks his stillness like an egg, and Tsuna’s face contorts into something that could be described as incredibly awkward horror. He holds his arms weirdly, like he wants to hug himself but isn’t sure the best position for them to go. Takeshi kind of wants to hug him to save him the choice, but that would be weird. Takeshi is pretty sure you have to spend a little more time with friends before hugging happens.

Or…Or do you?

He can’t ask. That would be weird! He’s doing pretty fine on his own, anyway.

“What…but…I have school?” Tsuna’s voice is trembling slightly, and his eyes are darting around, probably for exits.

“Live your life,” Hana says grimly.

“But…school! Hibari-san!”

“That’s why you’re technically being kidnapped! With mom’s approval, of course.”

Said mom prances up to Tsuna, and buries her fingers in his untidy hair. Then she makes a face, pulls a small hairbrush from her purse, and begins raking through the rat’s nest with a ferocity only a parent could manage. Tsuna squeals, horror forgotten. “Come now, Tsu-kun, take better care of your appearance! You won’t attract anyone with a look like that! Ooh, your hair is getting so waxy again. Did any of you pack any dish soap? He’s got eczema on his scalp, this seborrhoeic thing that dumps all this grease in his hair, so washing it doesn’t work, you have to strip it with dish soap or vinegar, except he never does it, even though it’s just ten minutes in the sink, can you imagine? This boy of mine, such a little handful! Ooh, don’t forget to shampoo and condition it afterwards, you always forget, and it just ends up fluffing out, so frizzy. What did kids used to call you? Saiyan or something?”

Tsuna with…fluffy hair? Takeshi can’t quite imagine it. Tsuna is synonymous with rake-thin limbs and pallid skin and dead, shadow-ringed eyes and hair that looks like it hasn’t been washed or brushed since the day of his very birth. Any sort of approachable trait might be killing the appeal, actually. Takeshi thinks he’s kind of cool like that, in a grim, antisocial, feral cat sort of way.

“M-Mooooom!” Tsuna whines.

“Hush, I’m not done. Hold on, I’ll have to comb it…Oh, would you look at that.” She holds a chunk of hair up, and Takeshi is enchanted to find that not only does Tsuna have a hair whorl, it’s slightly stained with a smear of dark colour. “It’s growing out again. I hadn’t packed the dye! Look at you, this is what happens when you don’t watch out for your own appearance!”

“The…dye?” Takeshi prompts.

“His hair’s black,” Hana shrugs. “He dyes it because he’s a weirdo.”

Okay, fluffy and also black definitely works for Tsuna’s look. Takeshi will have to join their effort to find some dish soap. They can probably clean his hair out in a local public bath. The town…Miyazawa, it has public baths, right? They ought to, a swarm of teenagers out camping and picking up garbage is going to get _really_ smelly.

Speaking of swarms of teens, there’s one clustered around the bus. Most of them are in casual wear, and half-asleep. There’s a select few in the school uniforms helping Gokudera and Sasagawa load up the bus with the countless bags. Miki is perched daintily on the bus steps, recording something important-looking on his clipboard, and occasionally pulling his feet up so someone can get by. There has to be about forty kids in total.

Around the edges are a few adults, some talking to scattered kids staying away from those busy with the buses. They’re probably the parents. The only adult actually among the group is a redhead with…some sort of debris in his hair, scratching his stubble and yawning, occasionally grabbing some kids by the collar and throwing them away from the packing effort without even looking at his targets. Teacher, Takeshi is guessing.

Hana narrows her eyes at the crowd. “They’re all… _young_.”

“We’re young.”

“First years,” she continues, ignoring him. “He’s sending me on a trip with _first years_. There’s no such thing as a hot boy in first year!”

Tsuna raises his eyebrows at her, and then looks pointedly at Takeshi. Takeshi isn’t sure if Tsuna wants Takeshi to agree with him. Probably? He nods.

“No _mature_ hot boys in first year. Look at them. They probably eat their own boogers.”

Takeshi thinks she’s being a little mean; most of them look perfectly okay, if a little dangerous, and there’s a bunch of girls in there too. Hana really seems like the kind of person to be extra picky with dating, though. Takeshi just kinda accepted anyone who confessed to him. He can’t imagine what it must be like, actually managing your tastes and preferences so carefully.

Tsuna keeps making little distressed animal noises ranging from grunts to mewling depending on how hard his mom is pulling at his hair. Eventually Tsuna gives up on escape and just clings onto Takeshi so he doesn’t fall over. Takeshi leans closer obligingly.

“Oooiii, Nii-san!” Hana calls out, attracting the attention of Sasagawa Ryouhei. He lights up when he sees them, and nearly knocks over ten kids in attempt to get over to them.

“SAWADA! I’m going on the trip with you! We’ll train to the extreme!”

“Why do I need training?” Tsuna squeaks.

“MUSCLE THERAPY! We need to get your chest in tip-top condition, alright?”

Tsuna looks away, curling in on himself again. Sasagawa deflates almost immediately. Tsuna folds into his mother’s arms, letting her use a comb to get the rest of his hair in order, and Sasagawa takes a step back, looking sheepish.

Huh. Tsuna must not like him very much. Takeshi can’t imagine why; Sasagawa seems inherently likable.

“It’s nice of you to go with him, Ryouhei-kun!” Tsuna’s mother chirps, finishing her work with a bit of finger-combing. Takeshi watches attentively as Tsuna very obviously melts under the stroking, leaning into her touch and closing his eyes peacefully. He actually seems to be about ready to purr. It’s the closest to clear positive expression Takeshi has ever seen him express.

“Hey, _mamma_ , we’re almost ready!” Gokudera waves excitedly, sprinting over to meet the group. He gives Sasagawa a hearty slap on the back. “Sasagawa’s been pulling his weight. As expected as the Boss to pull in such a trustworthy family!”

“It was all Kyouko-chan’s idea to take you on a vacation!” Tsuna’s mom smiles, tilting her son’s head up. “That Hibari-kun is so temperamental, isn’t he? It seems like you wouldn’t be able to properly recover if you jumped right back into your duties.”

“Ah!” Tsuna jerks away from his mom and ruffles his own hair in horror. “That’s right! Hibari-san would never allow this! He’s going to kill me!”

“Oh, don’t worry, Tsu-kun, I’m sure he’ll be angry, but he’ll forgive you. It’s a kidnapping!” She gives him an exaggerated wink.

“ _Moooom!_ What if he attacks Kyouko?”

“Then I’d have to kill him,” Sasagawa says grimly.

“Why don’t you prevent it altogether by letting me go to school? It’s already…” He looks at the clock. “HIIIIIIIIIIII! IT’S FIVE MINUTES UNTIL SCHOOL STARTS! I’M LATE!”

“Good thing you’re not going to school, Boss!” Says Gokudera.

“Don’t worry. Kyouko-chan is still going to school, so she’ll cover for you!” Takeshi assures.

“I’ve got a gun,” Hana says, which is…a _kind_ of assurance.

Tsuna returns to his huddled posture, and his eyes are flicking around at an unnatural rate. His face is pinched though, so Takeshi would like to consider it progress in character development. At least in comparison to how he was before all this Disciplinary Committee stuff. He sits behind Takeshi, and you could _feel_ it when he looked at you. It’s like you’re being watched by a ghost; a strangely cold, clammy feeling. And then you would turn around, and he would just be staring blankly, looking ready for a battle to the death. And if you took him up on it, he’d forget you ever existed once he was through dumping your body in Tōkyō Bay.

Okay, so maybe Takeshi was not really a fan of Tsuna at all until he started doing cute stuff like wearing cat ears. But that just means he made the grievous mistake of judging a book by its cover, which he will never do again.

Tsuna is definitely getting more used to being soft and cute instead of hard and terrifying, though. Especially hair-wise. He can see what his mom meant by it frizzing now; his hair has doubled in size thanks to the work of the comb, and the slight rigid nature of the greasy clumps she hadn’t managed to work free are holding it up at weird angles. The hair whorl is just a poof amongst more poof, topped by a sea of split ends. Takeshi slowly moves to take a piece of Tsuna’s hair, so as to not alarm him. Now that the giant mat of hair’s been untangled, he can see the dark smear is, in fact, a small bloom of blue-black.

“Huh. It _is_ coming in dark,” he notes.

“Hibari-san is going to kill me,” Tsuna mutters.

“It’s okay, I’m sure if you come back to school with a different hair colour, he’ll only punish you once,” Hana tells him, pressing a gentle kiss of knuckles to Tsuna’s temple.

“Yeah, but _I’ll still be dead._ And why aren’t you worried about Kyouko? Why am I the only one worried about Kyouko? I don’t worry about anything and yet I’m the only one worried about Kyouko?”

“If anyone could maneuver around Hibari, it would probably be Kyouko, Tsuna. That’s her whole thing.”

“He _hit_ her already!”

“Because she attacked him! And besides, he would never do anything to hurt someone once he’s done punishing them. It’s one of his weird authority things. He’ll probably just…knock her head in the wall and tell her not to do it again. Right?”

Tsuna frowns. “That’s not- It’s not…Uh…Hm. Huh. That’s…actually true. But…wait, why are you so attuned to Hibari-san’s violence patterns? _I_ never figured that one out.”

Hana pinkens. “Uhm.”

“Don’t worry about it Boss!” Gokudera loudly interrupts. “The way I see it, she’s more than just capable. I’m getting the feeling she’s…” He leans in closer and whispers conspiratorially. “…An UMA.”

“…A what.”

“An UMA! An _unidentified mysterious animal_. Y’see, when she came over to invite me in on her plans, she did some weird mind trick to Miki over there, but seeing as my choice in men is fantastic, nothing came of it. She was obviously weakened by the onslaught.”

Sasagawa looks warily at Gokudera, like he’s not sure if he wants to punch him or not. Tsuna looks much the same.

Takeshi scratches his cheek nervously. “Uh…just because she was staring and had a fainting spell doesn’t mean that—”

“She had a fainting spell?” Tsuna says abruptly, every ounce of his attention suddenly fixated on Takeshi.

Gokudera sidetracks him in the next instant. “I knew it! She must be an alien, or—”

Tsuna grabs a fistful of Gokudera’s shirt and drags him down to eye level with a static, taught violence. He looks at him like he’s trying to boil him alive with the power of his glare, and his eyes seem almost black with loathing. “ _What. Happened. To. Kyouko_.”

“Woah, uh. Listen…” Takeshi places a hand on Tsuna’s back, which proved to be an incredible mistake, because he recoils with a full-body shudder and uses his other hand to grip Takeshi’s wrist, Gokudera entirely forgotten. Tsuna’s mom lets out a small ‘oh’, and Hana is making exaggerated ‘cut the conversation’ gestures in the background. Sasagawa still looks like he’s trying to figure out if he should punch Gokudera.

Tsuna looks at Takeshi, and his eyes are barely moving at all. The feeling is…intense. Takeshi leans away, letting out a breath. “Hasn’t Kyouko been doing…stuff?”

“Stuff,” Tsuna repeats.

“Oh,” Sasagawa realizes. “She wants to train with me, now! She’s been extremely into it!”

“Yeah, so she was probably just tired,” Takeshi says.

“She was exhausted this morning. She’s expending an extreme effort,” Sasagawa nods.

Tsuna instantly deflates and lets go of Takeshi, returning to his neutral surliness. He still looks pretty pissed with Gokudera, though. “Don’t make up weird rumours about my friends.”

“B-But—” Gokudera tries.

Tsuna gives him a disgusted look. Gokudera’s mouth shuts with a click.

The conversation goes stilted, and Takeshi scrambles for a way to get the mood back to normal again. He looks around. The redheaded teacher is now kind of…leaning over Miki, like a vulture. Miki looks terrified, but Miki has looked terrified every time Takeshi has seen him, so that’s probably not saying much. He opens his mouth, considers how he should approach this new topic, and then decides his instincts haven’t failed him so far, so he may as well just wing it. “Hey, do Miki and the teacher know each other?”

Gokudera whirls around and catches sight of the pair, and he looks _spitting mad_. “What the _hell_ does that guy think he’s doing? _Mamma_ , Sasagawa, keep Tsuna here!”

And then he takes off before Takeshi can ask why he would call Tsuna’s mom _mamma_. And pulls out…what are those, fireworks? And starts screaming at the teacher, who drifts away like Gokudera was a gust of wind that blew him away. Miki picks up his position attached to Gokudera’s tailcoats again.

“So spirited,” Tsuna’s mom sighs.

Hana leans over to Tsuna. “Hey. What the hell is wrong with your tutor.”

“Sometimes he just happens. I try to tune it out.”

Tsuna’s mom wraps an arm around Tsuna’s shoulder. “He seems a bit too frisky. Tsu-kun, make sure he doesn’t get into any fights, okay? He listens to you. And make sure to listen to Ryouhei-kun while you’re there. If you think he’s pushing you too much, Takeshi-kun will take care of it, he’s an athlete, isn’t he? And you’ve both got broken bones, he should know when’s a good limit. I don’t think Ryouhei-kun’s ever gotten his bones broken once.”

“Microfractures,” Sasagawa says seriously. “I break my bones every day to make them stronger. My arms are extremely sturdy. Like steel beams.”

“Is that why you kept punching dirt in elementary school?” Hana asks.

Ryouhei lights up. “Yeah! Wanna try it?”

Hana opens her mouth, declares “Oh look, Kitchen boy is here”, and takes off. Takeshi looks over his shoulder, and is almost surprised that she isn’t lying; Irie Shouichi, AKA BPKitchen, is standing in the street with a large backpack and his duffel bag. He seems to be praying into his necklace, or something.

“My. Who’s that? Another friend?” Tsuna’s mom asks.

“Hana-chan’s got a prototype invention from a friend of hers, he’s coming along to check its stats or something.”

“Oh, Tsu-kun, you know _inventors_? I knew that Disciplinary Committee business would be good for you!”

“Yeah, remember when _I broke a rib_?” Tsuna grits.

“Honey, that nice Hibari boy made sure to take care of them for you. And making sure that won’t happen again is why Ryouhei-kun is here! You don’t need to be so grumpy. Goodness, when was the last time you’ve worked yourself into a proper strop?”

Tsuna mouths _‘nice Hibari boy’_ in horror.

“Okay, we’re done putting the bags away!” Gokudera shouts, running at them. Miki drifts off his lapels and switches to hiding behind Takeshi. Tsuna’s mom continues to escort Tsuna to the bus, with Sasagawa guarding his other side, and Gokudera quickly relieves Irie of his bags and sprints back to the bus to throw them in with the rest of the luggage. He’s pretty efficient.

Irie shuffles over to Hana, looking a bit sick. He’s clutching his stomach with one hand, and pressing the charm of his necklace to the side of his mouth with the other. Now that Takeshi is getting a good look at him, he realizes that the charm is actually a ring; a large, silver cocktail ring, with a huge oval orange stone set into a design of opened wings. Takeshi can tell the stone is rounded because there’s a matching one on the hand clutching his stomach, though it’s yellow with closed wings.

“Cool rings,” Takeshi says without thinking.

Irie’s lips twitch. “…Th…Thanks. My friend sent them to me. The…the orange one is he…hers.”

“Is that why you’re kissing it?”

Irie drops the ring on the necklace like it’s on fire and goes bright red. “No! It’s just…I like…the big stone! Is all! People do it all the time for…for loyalty and stuff…”

Hana is making a face like a cartoon cat upon spotting an unsuspecting and very fat bird. Takeshi takes that as prompt enough to keep going. “Oh. Huh. So you’re like, loyal to her?”

“Well…uhm, I guess…she’s really cool, and she likes my music…” Irie scratches the back of his head nervously. “I think she’s like, important or something. I mean, these rings are probably _really_ expensive. It’s supposed to be like…a mission, to keep them safe.”

“Wow! Sounds important! Wouldn’t it be cool if she were a princess or something?”

Hana makes a little shrieking sound and cozies up to Irie. “Oooohhh! Have you ever seen her before? Where does she live? What are you holding the rings for? Is she your girlfriend? Do you _liiiike_ her?”

“N-no, that’s not— it’s because she’s in Europe, and all of her friends are in Europe, so they can’t pick them up yet! We’re just penpals!”

“ _A European princess!”_ Hana squeals.

“She’s not a princess!” Pause. “I…I think.”

“Tell me everything, oh my god, I just thought you were some nerd that built creepy stuff with Miura-san! Come, confide in the _master of love_.”

Takeshi is pretty sure Hana has never dated a single person, but maybe she has spoken to enough people who have to get a good idea on how love works. He follows along cheerfully, a trembling Miki still clutching onto his shirt in tow, and they all make their way to the bus.

 

* * *

 

The thing about mafia types is that they’re too nice. Too sparkling clean, too focused on their little innovations to get their hands dirty. The mafia and the Blackmarket came from the same place. They’re lying to themselves; the only reason they don’t still enforce pizzo is because the mafia _are_ the businesses that would have otherwise been extorted. Murder is still smeared across the landscape of the Underworld, and they still like to pretend they’re above sin.

Romolo Zeni doesn’t have any such predilections.

The Zeni Famiglia is built on power, and as the fourth head, he is more than satisfied in fulfilling all that work. The power of ownership. The power of control. The power of being able to enforce his power alone, the power of collecting people easily enough that he doesn’t have to. The Mafia built a theme park to deter people like him, but he knows they can only build cute little benefits like that because they can’t hope to stop people like him.

It tastes like _success_.

“Have you found the tomb yet?” He calls out over his men. Well, not _his_ men, because he doesn’t want to give anyone the material to prove anything while he’s here; they’re just petty gangs he picked up back in Italy. He’ll _coincidentally_ absorb them into the family later.

“Nothing in the mountains or grounds. We’ll be skimming for sea caves for the next few days,” his second-in-command on this outing — Marcello, some smuggler who had been getting too aggressive lately — says.

“Hm. Up your guard for anyone from out of town. I want the hotels flushed, and anyone staying longer than a day wrecked. The Vongola probably know what I’m up to by now.”

“Sir.”

Romolo stands, smooths out the creases in his suit, and leaves the room. It’s so hard to be mafia, these days. Back in the 70s, you didn’t have to wear suits to anything short of a meeting. Nowadays, it’s just one more aspect of subtle power plays and peacocking for twitchy followers. More proof the mafia is falling apart around them. Disgusting, he thinks. Absolutely disgusting.

Upstairs, he picks up a half-eaten microwave dinner and continues onto one of the more private rooms in the dilapidated building. He doesn’t bother knocking. The resident probably wouldn’t notice, in the state he’s in.

The door swings open with an irritating little squeal, and the sunlight from the hall spills over the dimmer lanternlight inside the darkened room. The windows are blacked out, and there are winding shadows all over the place, cast by the hanging blue whips scattered all over the room, some thick, sturdy cords, some looking like thin, decaying pieces of meat. It smells like compost in here.

He takes the dinner and slides it across the floor until it skids to a stop right next to the sole figure in the mess. A few of the dozens of papers around him rustle, but he doesn’t even twitch.

“Eat,” says Romolo. “We’re narrowing the search. I need you in tip-top shape if it comes down to a raid.”

The boy doesn’t answer. His arm twitches slightly, and a flesh-coloured whip peels itself from its surface and lands on the ground with a dull _thump_. The boy scratches the place it came off, still smooth and clean, and shakes his elbow until the rest of it separates from his body. The whip blooms with the purple of a bruise, and then settles into the sharp blue colour of the rest of the hanging vines. There’s a sick sort of beauty to it.

“ _I mean it_. I don’t know how much falling apart like that takes out of you, but if you’re not healthy as a horse—”

“I get it,” the boy snaps, finally turning to look at him with dark, sunken eyes. “Go away. I’m busy.”

Romolo sneers, and slams the door.

He’s going to enjoy finishing this job.


	12. The Willpower Of A Volunteer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Gunfights, mild slurs against women, and implied torture of a teenager

Incredible things Hana is shocked to only just now discover; Tsuna eats like a hamster when he’s sulky.

They’ve all occupied the back of the bus, to best pin Tsuna in place in the three seats lining the end. Tsuna is trapped in the corner, Yamamoto is sitting next to him, and Hana is holding the end. Ryouhei is sitting in the row just in front, across from them so he can see if Tsuna is ready to bolt. Irie Shouichi is tragically sitting next to Ryouhei in the window seat, so Hana no longer has the power to gossip with him. Gokudera is in the seat just in front of them, with Oogawa Miki in _his_ window seat. There’s no escape.

Tsuna seems to have accepted this, because he pulled his legs up to fit the ice cooler under his feet, took an onigiri, and began nibbling on it _like a hamster_. It’s so cute it is _vile_. Tsuna is too gross to eat like a hamster. It should be gross to look at. Hana blames the poofy hair and the fact he is so incredibly small, especially in comparison to Yamamoto.

“Stop staring at me,” Tsuna grumbles through a mouth full of rice.

“I’m bored,” Hana returns easily. “I can look at you all I like.”

Gokudera sticks his head out from behind the back of his chair. “If the Boss says not to look at him, then you better not look at him, woman!”

“Shut up, monkey,” Hana spreads her leg over Yamamoto’s knees and kicks the back of Gokudera’s chair. Gokudera snarls at her.

The bus is honestly not as rowdy as she was expecting, though. It’s noisy, sure, and a few kids keep getting up, but there’s no running or rocking or hooting or hollering. There’s two buses taking them to Miyazawa, with Gokudera on one and the teacher on the other. She squints at the back of Gokudera’s chair. Is he…is he the _authority_ on this trip?

Hana leans forward. “Hey. Tutor.”

“ _What,”_ Gokudera grits.

“Why aren’t any of the parents coming? There was a bunch of them there, right?”

“Not enough money. Even on the school budget, we got 1,000 per head, and the school is paying an additional 2,000 yen.”

“What the hell? What are we going to do to wash them all? 2,000 would land you like, two visits in a good resort town bath for _one person_.”

Tsuna swallows his mouthful of rice. “Mm…I have a lot of spare cash. Probably more than 5,000. I can spot them towards the end.”

“Besides, we’re camping! We can buy camp food! Like granola bars, canned food…”

“This is going to end terribly,” Hana mutters.

Tsuna redoubles his efforts to look spectacularly hamster-like.

The trip remains peaceful, and Hana spends it reading tabloids, legs crossed, and occasionally sparing glances around her just in case someone is going to go crazy and get in a fistfight. Tsuna attracts so many violent weirdos, it could happen. Ryouhei is gibbering excitedly to Irie about Miura, and Irie is scrambling to explain his constant barrage of questions. Oogawa is silent as the grave. Gokudera is mostly quiet, and it sounds like he’s writing something down, but sometimes he jumps to his feet and hollers something at the Koyama students. Tsuna’s ice pack defrosts, and he looks pale and twitchy as his drugs wear off. Takeshi takes the lukewarm pack and switches it out for a new one from the cooler. Tsuna manages a smile. For him, that means the corners of his mouth twitch up a little bit. He gives that one to Kyouko pretty often. Hana has only ever seen him actually _smile_ smile towards his mom and absolutely no one else.

After a while, Yamamoto seems to get bored of alternating between staring off into space and reading over Hana’s shoulder, and leans in close to Tsuna. “You feeling okay?”

“I forgot broken bones hurt,” Tsuna grunts. “It’s tolerable now.”

“That’s good. You seem kind of fragile.” Yamamoto curls a hesitant, questioning finger around Tsuna’s ribs. Hana urgently slaps him, but it’s too late; Tsuna is already slanting away from Yamamoto’s touch.

“ _Never touch him,”_ Hana whispers harshly. _“His mom and Kyouko can. No one else.”_

Yamamoto raises his eyebrows and lets out a quick “sorry”.

Tsuna works his jaw, and slowly returns to his original position. “…It’s fine.”

“So, uhm…how long have you known Kyouko-chan?” Yamamoto asks.

“…Since we were eight.” Tsuna clutches his ice pack tighter to his chest and hides behind his knees. “She helped me out and invited me over to her house. And then she followed me home so she could come visit the next day. She took me out a lot.”

“Ah, really? So you’ve always got along?”

Tsuna nods, still curled in a ball and staring fixedly out the window. “We weren’t too close at school. But we had a two-way diary. We just got used to being apart so we had more stuff to write. Kyouko was the only one who would be friends with me, so I didn’t have much to write out. She didn’t care, though.”

“Oh. Huh. Did Hana-chan go to the same school?”

Hana pauses and glances up from her magazine. When did Yamamoto switch to first-name basis with her?

“Mm…She and Kyouko weren’t friends for a while, though. I think they met through having the same friends. You should probably ask Hacchan about that...”

Hana cannot believe Tsuna is still insisting on calling her that.

“Ohh. So what about Mochida?”

“He was in in my class for a few years. It was mixed grades, since there weren’t so many students at our school…he got really into that Useless-Tsuna and Dame-Tsuna stuff. I think he used to tell people he skipped a grade, too.”

“You can’t skip grades, can you?”

“We were ten, so.” Tsuna lifts his head. “I was bullied a lot, but he never liked stuff like that, even if he didn’t like me. He mostly made a nuisance of himself.”

“So you guys got along?”

“Uhm…sort of. I guess we don’t have a malicious relationship. He’s just annoying.”

Yamamoto hums, leaning forward to peer at Tsuna’s face. “You never got along with anyone else before?”

“Hacchan is Hacchan. I’ve never needed anyone besides Kyouko before. I’m not…really used to friends,” Tsuna murmurs. His cheeks are tinged pink.

“Hmmmmmm.”

“…What?” Tsuna frowns.

“Nothing. It’s just like…you’re more vibrant lately.” Yamamoto leans on the palm of his good hand with his fingers curled. “Before, you always seemed so…I don’t know, greyed-out? But now you’re way easier to read. I mean, you’re loud when you’re scared, and it’s easy to tell when you’re pissed off, and even when you’re nervous, you express it. It’s like…you’re all full of colour, now. It’s nice to see. I can sorta tell what Kyouko-chan likes about you!”

Tsuna pulls his head up all the way, gaping. Then, to Hana’s incredible awe, the slight dusting of pink expands into complete, all-consuming red, and Tsuna clutches his trouser legs so tightly that he might actually tear the seams.

Hana agrees with Tsuna. That’s the exact kind of sappy hyper-observant shit Hana would _love_ to have a cute boy to tell _her._ What a girl would do to get read like that…she’s already discarded Yamamoto as Boyfriend Material, bless his beautiful, goofy face, but even _she_ might buckle if he started spouting stuff like that. His weird sports thing is _kinda_ like a bad boy thing, right?

“…Huh.” Yamamoto tilts his head. “You’re the type to get flustered easily, aren’t you?”

Tsuna, always one to do everything in his power to evade common sense and basic human conventions, has clearly reached the point where the ‘normal’ thing to do would either be a totally weird creepazoid with no earthly attachments or the human version of a very grumpy wet cat. He takes a moment to process this incredibly embarrassing comment.

And then he gets embarrassed.

Hana watches on in horror as Tsuna retreats into himself like a turtle hiding in its shell, curling his legs up and leaning as far into them as he can without bending his ribcage, and gives up tearing at his seams in favour of covering his face, which has gone from red cheeks to a full-face ‘will probably have a stroke’ crimson. He leans away from Yamamoto and glares at him, mouth too tightly pinched to manage a reply.

Hana smacks Yamamoto. “How the _hell_ did you do that?”

“Do what?” Yamamoto laughs.

“Get him to react! I’ve been at it for two years! He blows off everything I say no matter what! He doesn’t respond to _anything_!”

“Well, I mean, he likes Kyouko, and she’s one of the only people who hangs out with him. You’re pretty hard on him, you know. Doesn’t it make more sense if he’s just the type of person who responds more to people who are being nice? I’m only returning a compliment.”

Hana’s mouth drops open. He’s right. Had she _really_ never thought of that, after all this time? …Well, she would never go for it, considering her pride as someone who has dedicated herself to antagonism, but _thinking_ about it? She had just assumed Kyouko was the only one he would bother with because Kyouko could get along with anyone.

Gokudera gets up in his seat to give her a filthy look from above. “Hey! Woman! You been bullying the Boss?”

“Don’t be dumb. You can’t bully Tsuna. That’s the whole point.”

“That’s a dirt poor excuse for abuse, shitwitch! Why don’t you slide on over there to the stall, I’ll give that toilet a good scrubbing with your ugly face!”

“I’d like to see you try, you orangutan!” Hana kicks his seat.

“That’s it!” Gokudera whips out those little dynamite-stick-things — too small and stout for actual dynamite, probably fireworks or squibs — stuffed between his fingers and moves to come at her, and Hana reaches into her purse for her pepper spray, but Ryouhei stops him en route in a really impressive full-body lock.

“That’s enough of that,” Ryouhei says sternly. “Kurokawa doesn’t bully Sawada. If she did, I’d take care of it.”

Hana wonders if that’s why all the people who liked to vent their stress by beating up Tsuna in elementary school abruptly stopped beating up Tsuna. Her opinion of Ryouhei skyrockets.

She sticks her tongue out at Gokudera. Gokudera lets out a scream of rage and flails helplessly. The driver hollers at them to keep it down. Tsuna lets out a tortured groan and buries his face in his knees. Yamamoto just laughs.

Man, what a trip this is going to be.

 

* * *

 

Miyazawa is a resort town, so Ryouhei was generally expecting this, but the entire town is almost aggressively picturesque. Rolling green tree-coated hills rising into one small mountain, spilling into cliffs that overlook the sea, trees lining the roadside, colourful banners celebrating summer, and rustic-looking shops all over the place. Ryouhei looks for a gym eagerly, hoping to get a little training in early.

Irie is hovering around behind him, so Ryouhei sticks to Kurokawa so the two can still talk. He’s pretty weedy; if Ryouhei can manage it, he’d like to train him alongside Sawada. He’s a lot bigger than Sawada, closer to Kyouko in his height/weight ratio, but ‘taking it easy’ is good for beginners too! It’s better to go straight forward and figure out how much you can do in one go!

He’ll probably have to get Gokudera’s beanpole lackey in on it too; he’s a narrow, trembling little stick only barely shorter than Gokudera, and definitely doesn’t have enough muscle mass to make up for the lack of fat on his body. Ryouhei just needs to figure out _how_. He’ll just throw out methods until one works.

First method: “Hey, Gokudera! Let me train your underling!”

Gokudera squints at him. He’s probably still mad at Kurokawa, and still mad at Ryouhei for stopping him. But this and that are obviously unrelated, so it shouldn’t matter! Ryouhei stares back with the determination of a man of the sport.

“…Yeah, whatever. I can’t do much physically.” Gokudera rolls his shoulder and tilts his head back. “Miki! Keep the Boss on observation, make sure no one messes with him! Sasagawa is going to be training you! He’s starting low-stress with the Boss because he’s injured, so no worries on if you can take it, alright?”

“Oh! Uhm…okay! I mean, yes sir!” Oogawa pipes. He’s helping out taking the tents out of the bus, since he’s not strong enough for the bags. That’s Ryouhei’s job.

With the help of most of the gakuran-donned students, Kurokawa, Yamamoto, and a constantly-hollering Gokudera, Ryouhei starts taking bags down the street, towards the beach. When he sees it for the first time, he immediately understands why Kyouko would choose this kind of location, and his mouth draws into a thin line.

The beach looks like a landfill. There’s nets in the water to keep the trash from drifting out to sea, but it’s a small comfort in the face of a sea of trash, piling mountains of it, coating it so thoroughly that Ryouhei can’t even see the sand. There’s no people around picking at it, either. Or any people around at all. Just a landfill of a beach, a few trash bins, and them, coming to clean it up.

“Where is everyone?” Kurokawa asks.

“I called the mayor before we came in,” an adult’s voice rings out over them. Ryouhei turns to see the redheaded teacher with twigs in his hair scratching his stubble absentmindedly. “He said ‘don’t ask us for help’…I guess this what he meant.”

“Yamazaki!” Gokudera shouts.

“That’s Yamazaki- _sensei_ to yo—”

Gokudera shoves four tent bags at him. “Start setting up!”

“Hey, who’s the thirteen-year-old in this relationship?” Yamazaki whines.

“I don’t know, who’s got thirteen sticks of dynamite in his left pocket? _Start setting up_ ,” Gokudera barks back.

“Kind of getting the feeling you got thirteen sticks of dynamite right up your a—”

Gokudera suddenly has four red sticks in his hand and is leaping on Yamazaki’s back.

Ryouhei frowns. “Gokudera’s thirteen?”

“Yeah, right?” Sawada drawls while he passes them. He’s the only one not carrying anything, since his injury is localized in his ribcage. “I feel like he should be a third-year.”

“He’s very responsible. You’ve got an extremely good man as your tutor!”

Several explosions go off behind them. Yamazaki strides ahead, with Gokudera slung over his shoulder, held up by his collar with two fingers, like a coat.

“Uh…sure?”

Everyone starts setting up the tents on the streak of grass in front of the beach, upwind of the stench, and nestled in just before the hiking trail at the lip of the forest. Almost all of the tents are personal use, so there’s a whole range of sizes, many of them capable of housing more than one person. Yamazaki goes around pasting numbers on finished tents. Ryouhei’s tent gets a #09.

Yamamoto doesn’t have a tent, and before anyone notices this, he chucks his bag in Sawada’s #01 tent and helps him with his ice pack cooler. Ryouhei thought Gokudera might want to be in Sawada’s tent, but Gokudera is currently tied to a lamppost, so it’s not like he has first pick, really. Oogawa’s own tent is #03, and is far bigger than he expected. Irie’s tent is #05, and seems only big enough for one person.

“Ugh. So many people didn’t bring their own tents,” Kurokawa mutters darkly as she arranges the long, thin poles holding up her own tent. “They better not make me room with another guy, compartments or no. Boys _smell._ ”

“We have underprivileged female students too,” Yamazaki sings, slapping an #11 on her shoulder.

Ryouhei, figuring he ought to be doing something, starts helping other kids with their tents. He’s pretty sure he’s the only second-year in this entire outing. Most of them are deeply thankful for his help, though a few get in a screaming match with him, only to be quickly assisted by Oogawa, who’s hands are silent, swift, and steady, despite his frail body and frailer personality. Ryouhei really admires someone who knows what they’re good at. He’d be pretty good in the lightweight class…

Gokudera is finally freed from the lamppost once everyone with a tent has gotten ready, about twenty minutes after arriving. He immediately tries to get in a fistfight with Yamamoto, and refuses to relent until Sawada comes out to see what all the screaming is about and kicks him in the head. Gokudera grimaces and drags his bag over to Oogawa’s tent, glaring over his shoulder.

It’s another five minutes of getting bags all sorted before everyone is pooled in front of the tents. Yamazaki and Gokudera stand at the front. Yamazaki has to be around 180 centimetres or taller, and while he’s wearing loose clothing, Ryouhei can pick up on what a man with muscle mass looks like. He’s probably not filled out, his figure would be thicker if he was, but definitely wiry. Ryouhei is going to have to ask him if he boxes. He’s never met an adult who boxes, beyond his coach. It would be _awesome_.

“Alright, not everyone can afford a tent, or didn’t have one on a one-day notice, so we’re going to split the group into two! Everyone who has a tent set up, to the left! Everyone who doesn’t have a tent, to the right! Everyone who has a single tent or already filled their occupancy, to me!”

Eleven people on the left, including Ryouhei, eight standing around Yamazaki, and the rest looking skittish at the sparse selection.

“Hm. Horrifying. Okay, everyone with a tent that can fit more than two people, over towards me…” Seven people. “Not bad, not bad…now, everyone in the two-people tents who aren’t girls, I’m putting your number in a raffle. I’ll just throw all the castoffs in the big kid tents.”

And so it goes. Ryouhei gets a smaller kid who has a solid upper body and black slicked-back hair, Kurokawa and her three-person tent gets two girls — a girl with a medical mask and long, wavy hair in three tones of blonde, brown, and black and a girl with shorter black hair swept over her eyes and a threadbare cardigan — and Yamamoto gives Sawada a high-five.

When assignments are all through and done with, Gokudera starts assigning teams. “Okay, I want everyone with low athleticism around the edges. Everyone else, try to pick your way up the trash hills. If you’re trying to get a couch off or something, don’t be a fucking idiot, get someone stronger than you to help get it to the bins. Yamazaki will probably be laying on his ass all day, get him to help. Injured and disabled students, I want you with Sasagawa over there.” He points at Ryouhei. “He’ll pick up your pace. And for fuck’s sake, stay _around the edges_. I don’t need injured students trying to get their broken leg out of TV or something. Have you ever been stuck in a landfill before? Because I have! _And it was hell_. Watch your step, and don’t tread if you’re not built solid enough to keep yourself out of trouble.”

“You’re so good at this,” Yamazaki croons, mussing up Gokudera’s hair.

“Hey! Don’t make me break your fingers, asshole!” Gokudera barks back.

“Soooo cute. Alright, you heard him! Drop your bags off at your tent, grab a trash bag, and start picking!”

Ryouhei decides to start right behind the tents, just along the treeline, so if any of his team decides to charge through, they won’t fall through the garbage like Gokudera was suggesting. He’s joined by Yamamoto, Sawada, and the girl with three hair colours.

“Alright! We’re going to do this cleanup to the extreme!” Ryouhei shouts. “We should have the edge done by sundown!”

Sawada looks blankly at him, and then turns to the girl next to him. “Hi.”

She nods at him, and starts using the garbage pick to attack the trash. Yamamoto laughs and joins in, with Sawada holding his bag for him.

Yeah, Ryouhei feels pretty confident about this. Kyouko always has such good ideas. He just hopes she’s going to be okay by herself.

 

* * *

 

Kyouko is still bone-tired when she gets to school, so it’s a good thing that Hibari is conveniently missing when she gets there. His usual post of leaning gloomily out the window as the first of the students trickle in is empty, and Kyouko is getting the impression that he isn’t in the school at all.

Her friend from the next class over, Sachi, swoops in on her the moment she gets through the front doors to confirm this. “What happened last weekend? Everyone’s suddenly missing! Yamamoto-kun and Ryouhei-san and Hana-chan and Hibari-senpai and even Tsuna!”

“They’re on a vacation!” She pauses. “Though I don’t know where Hibari-san went.”

“Vacation? But school is still in! There’s a month to go! We have a festival to prepare for!” She pauses and leans in closer to Kyouko. “You’re volunteering, right? How’s the sports festival going?”

“Hmm…the student council said that we’re underbudget this year. It’ll probably be stripped back down to only September,” Kyouko sheepishly admits.

“Aww! I was looking forward to it!”

“Sorry…But most schools hold sports festivals in just September! And…a lot funding was going into the class trips, so…”

“Class trips _have_ been pretty nice,” Sachi nods. “But what did you do to get Hana-chan to leave?”

“Uhm…nothing! I just asked her and she said okay.”

“I bet she’s going to scout for eye candy. How long are they gone for?”

“About a week! Just enough for Tsuna to feel better.”

“A _week_? Is Hibari-senpai going to let that fly? Tsuna is a part of the Disciplinary Committee, you know! He’s going to be soooooo mad at you!”

“I know that! So…so you can’t tell him, not yet. Please?” Kyouko holds her hands up as if in prayer.

“Well…okay, but if he corners me, you’re on your own!” Sachi pouts. “You’re lucky he isn’t here today! You’re playing with fire! A natural disaster! A _firestorm_!”

“Okay, okay, I got it, geez!” Kyouko giggles.

They head upstairs to their classes, chatting about this and that; Kyouko had already told her what happened while Tsuna was in the hospital, so that line of conversation tapers off quickly enough, instead replaced by idle talk about what they’re going to do over summer break. Kyouko was probably going to spend a lot of time with summer sessions; Tsuna’s grades are abysmal, and based on Nezu’s very public ‘hypothetically…’ rants about his student’s grades, Yamamoto isn’t very good either. And goodness knows she isn’t going to let _Yamamoto_ down. She’s sure Tsuna’s tutor will help! He seems so excited about teaching.

Sachi drifts off to her own class, and Kyouko almost leaves herself, when she’s nearly bowled over by a member of the Disciplinary Committee. She flinches back, expecting someone to chastise her in Hibari’s place, but blinks when she sees that it’s Kusakabe, and he looks _exhausted_. Even more than her. There are dark bags under his eyes, and his hands are trembling slightly.

“Sorry,” he says thinly, and then he marches off down the hall, intent on his objective, radiating anxiety like a cloak.

The sight bothers her, and follows her into class. She tries paying attention, she really does, but now that she’s focused on it, the sensation of Kusakabe’s anxiety crawls all along her back. It feels wrong. Kusakabe seems to be under a lot of stress, and he doesn’t even have the Chairman to help him! Self-preservation is important, but he’s really struggling! Especially with so many students Mysteriously Missing…She makes up her mind in class, and focuses on just keeping her notes in order, Sasagawa Determination set in motion.

When break finally comes, Kyouko sneaks out of the room and walks as briskly as she can down the halls, making her way all the way up to the Disciplinary Committee’s clubroom. She pauses, remembering the last time she had come up here — she had been dismissed, and when she brought Tsuna up, _Hibari_ ended up being there — but decides there’s no helping it. Helping people in need is just the _proper thing to do_. Her brother said so himself.

She shuffles up and opens the door slowly, peeking inside. Most of the Disciplinary Committee aren’t here; just Kusakabe, who is always in the room, and three other members, one of which is typing rapidly on the room’s computer. She recognizes him as the nice boy who tried to escort Gokudera off the school grounds a while back.

“E-Excuse me?” Kyouko says in a high whisper. Everyone in the room looks up at her sharply. She flinches, but slides into the room.

“O-Oh! Kyouko-chan! Hello! What brings you in here?” The boy at the computer — Shintarou, right? — asks nervously.

“Er…I, u-uhm…” She shifts nervously, deflating a bit now that she’s actually here. “Well…I was thinking…Tsuna is going to be home sick for the week!”

Kusakabe looks at her, too far gone to even stack his stress anymore. “Is he.”

“Yes! And since we’re underbudget, we’re back to holding the sports festival at the regular September period! Very tragic. Sooo…I don’t have anything to do but study until the end of the semester!” She giggles nervously. “And…I’m sure you’d like some help while Tsuna isn’t here!”

Kusakabe lets out a long, exhausted sigh, massaging his temples as he does so. “Help would be nice, Sasagawa, but I’m in the middle of some _serious business_ here.”

“Ooh! Can I see?” Kyouko leans over Shintarou’s shoulder to peek at the screen. Records on Namimori West High School take up the screen, and there are papers scattered all around him listing information on them and someone named Udo.

“Sasagawa, _please_ —”

“It’s okay! I can help! I’m good at organization, and everyone always tells me that I’m great with people! And since Hibari-san isn’t here, it must be really hard on you, right?” Kyouko dances over to his desk and places her hands gently on his arm. She gives it a gentle squeeze. “Please…is it okay if I do this for you?”

Kusakabe just looks at her, numb and anxious beyond all belief, worried out of his mind about someone and yet working through his infinite stress. Kyouko’s heart tightens when she realizes why it is his mood is bothering her so much; she had felt exactly like this once, when she was clutching her brother’s hand as he lay in a hospital bed, a thin slash along his eyebrow bandaged up but still enveloped in a dark bruise. And when she was sitting next to a hospital bed again, next to a delirious and red-faced Tsuna. Breaking down out of worry for someone else is something she can always relate to.

Kusakabe makes a low, empty humming noise in the back of his throat, and gets up. He glances up to Shintarou. “Namimori West High has access to illegal firearms. We want to know why. The best we understand is that Fukuzawa Udo supplied them, and he’s dropped off the map since the Chairman took care of him. We’ve traced an illegal weapons trade, but it’s a recent dump; someone picking up weapons off the Nami West students and turning a profit by cycling them into the local authorities and Yakuza. The fact they don’t want to touch them is good for us. We’ll be more likely to find the actual perps. We’ll be sending a manned investigation into Nami West tonight. I hope you do your homework early.”

Kyouko smiles.

Kyouko blinks.

“…I…Illegal firearms?”

Kusakabe gives her a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Welcome to the Disciplinary Committee, and thank you for volunteering.”

 

* * *

 

Things were going just as Romolo Zeni had predicted they would.

Miyazawa citizens had gotten complacent, but they still knew their place; the Urayama Association has been there for years, and they own half the land in town. It took barely any effort at all to give everyone a _strong suggestion_ that they don’t nose into the business of the Urayama, or those nice Italian fellows that could be seen every now and then, and a _very_ strong suggestion that they don’t touch the mountain of garbage marring the once-beautiful view. The tourists could go up to the greater Namimori area if they wanted a vacation; their little bedroom community, Hakuyou, is puny and is set up right along the beachline.

The Urayama is making _bank_ with this operation, though. Zeni is willing to pay out the ass to get whatever he’s looking for, and they’re more than happy to oblige.

Unfortunately, no plan survives execution.

“Who the _shit_ is that,” the right-hand man, Taniguchi, barks as he blows out a bloom of cigarette smoke. “I thought we told Miyazawa to fuck off for a bit?”

There appears to be a small group swarming the beach, slowly picking at the garbage that they had tirelessly dumped all over it, throwing their bags into the very bins they had used to bring the trash over. Taniguchi is hideously offended by this.

“We did, but they’re not Miyazawa,” one of the men leaning against the railing of their building speaks up. “Seems to be a ‘school volunteer’ trip. Not like we can stop them. We don’t own any of the beach territory.”

“If the tourists come back before Zeni can find his toy, he’s going be right pissed,” Taniguchi sighs. “It’s harder to keep track of anyone spying on us with all those foreigners milling about, shitting things up with their cameras.”

“Might cut some of the money out of the deal.”

“It’s simple, though, isn’t it?” Taniguchi takes another drag of his cigarette and exhales, watching as the cloud obscures the specs scattered over the beach. “…We make sure Zeni doesn’t have a _reason_ to cut.”

He throws his cigarette down to the ground and grinds it out, and marches back into the building to the tune of the underling’s laughter. He smirks himself as he opens the door to the boss’ office and leans against the doorframe. “Hey, boss.”

“What,” Morita growls around his cigar.

“Buncha kids trying to clean up the beach.”

Morita raises his eyebrows. “And you gonna do anything about that?”

“’Course, boss. Could be heading out tonight. Just need to know how many I’m allowed to take.”

Morita laughs and leans over his desk, a snarl in his smirk. “As many as you need.”

Taniguchi turns to go.

“And Taniguchi?”

He turns.

“Don’t kill anyone this time.”

“Wonder if I can make any promises about that,” Taniguchi laughs.

Tonight is going to be _fun_.

 

* * *

 

The thing about having enough experience in ruling others, Fukuzawa Udo knows, is that you build a reputation for it. And when your reputation is high enough, people won’t question you, even when you fall. They build up an expectation of you. You start being _real_ familiar to them, and they don’t want to look to anyone else. It’s better than loyalty, that kind of familiarity.

Fukuzawa Udo was thoroughly thrashed by Hibari, but Hibari, he’s soft. Called the hospital up for him, covered his bills. Did everything but pat him on the head and give him a sweetie. Udo has no idea what the hell he thinks he’s doing, and he doesn’t know how the hell people still think it’s a good idea to follow someone who treats his enemies like that, but he’s more than happy to capitalize on it.

Even better, it seems like Hibari has become _conspicuously absent_ since yesterday morning. The Disciplinary Committee has been scrambling around in his absence. They can barely hold themselves together for _one day_. It’s pathetic.

Udo does a few of his stretches; he has two fractured ribs, one broken rib, and a broken arm. Beyond a few hairline fractures here and there, it’s not as bad as it could be, and he’s still fine for light tussling and just walking around. When he’s done, he gestures for his men to follow him with a tilt of his head.

He’s still got the weapons, but he’s lost the upper hand, especially with how fast that batshit dynamite asshole swooped in and took his spot. Udo doesn’t need to base himself out of a middle school, so he doesn’t technically care, but _shit_ is it bad for keeping up with territory and power dynamics. All the little dogs that would nip at his heels before have completely blown him off in favour of this out-of-town asshole.

But the Nami West boys love him. They’re willing to hold on, and they’re willing to help him investigate in this business about illegal weapons trade.

From what he understands, the new boss of Koyama — _Gokudera_ — doesn’t want to touch the weapons Udo’s men are carrying with a ten foot pole, so he’s kicking everyone’s asses, and then cycling the weapons through a vetted trade system. Udo can guess exactly where a foreigner would find a Japanese vetted illegal weapons trade line. Udo didn’t even know one _existed_ , and he would have never been able to access it alone. Gokudera’s been a filthy cheat.

The dealers are moving through an abandoned airplane hangar, where they’re shipped off in-country, from what Udo can tell. Most of them are going to the Akiyama family, and their subgroups. Udo knows _that_ tree of authority well enough; mountain themed, followed by tree themed, followed by fruit themed. The Peach Association being sighted around here is proof enough.

In fact, they’re here right now, loading crates. Udo peers from behind a warehouse. He can’t see much, but they’re sorting and filing weapons; from what Udo knows about what he gave his men, it’s probably being sorted into non-lethal guns and lethal guns. He doesn’t know what they’ll do with the lethal stuff.

“We’re not going to have to buy them back, are we?” One of the boys behind him ask.

“Of course not! We’re just going to have to sneak in there, alright? If you follow my lead…” Udo ducks down and begins his crawl towards the old hangar, and the others follow.

There’s a small sound of something flying through the air, and static. Udo turns around, but doesn’t see anything. Weird.

He continues, with four of his men in tow, making his way to the next warehouse, and he slides back into hiding again. This place is huge; it used to be a military base, or something. It’s technically Akiyama territory, so if he gets caught on the grounds, they’ll be pissed. If they catch him stealing, he’s fucked.

It’s fine, though. He’s had plenty of practice. He doesn’t need much anyway; he’s still got the weapons that he had at the start. He’s just repossessing what he lost.

Another small sound, followed by static. He looks around, but doesn’t see anything but the boys following him. Freaking him out.

Udo continues crawling his way down the row of warehouses, eyes locked on the hangar, careful to watch if any of them are looking their way. It’s stressing him out. He might just figure out where the guns are headed and intercept them on the way. He’s not really in any position to make risks.

“Uh…boss?”

“What is it?” Udo hisses.

“It’s the boys. They’re…Boss, there’s only three of us.”

Udo whips around. Out of the four he started with, there’s only two of them left. He leans over, grunting as it sends a sharp stab of pain through his side, and cusses when he sees a leg sticking out from in between the warehouses they’ve already passed. They must have gotten taken out as they were going in and out of cover, so when they turned around, they wouldn’t see the difference. How the fuck—

He gets his question answered when he hears another little _fwip_ , and something small and metallic embeds itself in one of his boy’s arms. He cusses again and jumps out of the way when the bullet lights up with a vibrant green electric charge.

“Son of a _bitch_!” Udo ducks into the area between warehouses and hobbles as fast as he can behind them before the shooter — no, he can’t see anyone, _sniper_ — can get to him. His one remaining underling quickly joins him.

“What the fuck!” He shouts.

“Sniper,” Udo snaps back. “That was non-lethal weaponry. I’m going to call in the rest of the boys to pick them up before the Akiyama find them. Get the fuck out of here, tell the scouts I’m fucked, and they’re gonna be fucked if they stick around!”

“Got it!” He runs off.

Udo quickly calls up the Nami West boys, tapping his fingers anxiously with each ring. When they pick up, he doesn’t bother with explaining much beyond ‘sniper’ and their location. On the other side of the lot is a rising hill, thick with the trees that coat the entire mountain, and layered with grass. He’d bet his ass that’s where the cover is.

It’s okay. He’s been taught how to deal with shit like this. He rubs his eyes and takes a deep breath. He’s got _training_. His climb up to the top of the ladder was _earned_. Those kids in Nami Middle are complacent in just strength and authority, but Udo, Udo knows what he’s doing. It’ll be okay. He’ll get out of this. The mission’s gone to shit, but he’ll manage.

“You trained for this,” he whispers to himself. He did. Udo takes the fold-up binoculars from his pocket and peers over the side of the building, taking a moment to focus properly on the treeline. He narrows his eyes. There…a figure in the shadows, a glint, tucked under a camo blanket.

And then, racing shadows coming from the opposite direction of the hangar. His boys. That sniper is going to wish they trained in hand-to-hand, because now they’re—

The sniper gets up, and Udo sees the vivid outline of legs that, even at a distance, are obviously dressed in nothing but tights, and the first boy goes swinging.

The sniper’s silhouette spins weirdly, he can’t see enough detail to see how, and the boy goes down. Another spin — is she _kicking?_ — and another one. Three more charge, and the figures are a weird, malformed blur, before the sniper is the only one standing. She turns, and Udo can see the glint of eyewear on her face, even from this distance.

“ _Shit_ ,” Udo whispers out loud.

He starts a hobbling run while she’s still standing, not stationed at her rifle. He probably won’t make it that far. He turns to look at his paralyzed men as he passes each opening; they look up at him fearfully. “I called them in to get you,” he says, and then swears again when he realizes that there’s not much point in that because _the sniper is still up_.

 _Don’t let your boys go, or they’ll drop you like lead weight_ , Udo’s lessons ring in his head, and he cusses again and again and again, how the hell is he going to keep his boys if getting them out of there is just going to let _more_ of them go? Why wasn’t there any lessons about this? That stupid son of a bitch ripped him off and now—

He calls again. “Sniper is still up, don’t retrieve any of ‘em! God _dammit_! Just…shoot the bitch, alright?”

He hides behind another warehouse, feeling like this is as far as he can go before she’s all set up again. Someone who can take out guys that fast can probably match his pace faster. He tilts his head around the warehouse again, with the binoculars, but he doesn’t see her. Where the…

His phone rings. He whips it open. “Do you see her?”

“Jesus christ, she’s got a gun—” The sound of something hitting a solid surface “—Holy _fuck_! She’s taking out everyone with a goddamn pistol! She’s like the terminator or something, boss please—”

“Alright, just…get out of there! Save what you can!” _Or they’ll drop you_ “Get the fuck out of there, are you listening?”

He hears screams, declarations of retreat, _‘shot the gun out of his hand, did you see that’_ , grunting, and then the one on the other end hangs up.

Udo swallows, pockets his phone, and keeps going. His ribs are aching like crazy. What the hell, what the hell, what the hell. He was just picking up his weapons, the weapons that Gokudera asshole _stole_ , what the hell, he doesn’t _deserve_ this. He knows what he’s doing. How could things get this bad when he knows what he’s doing?

He stops at the last warehouse. He takes his phone with trembling hands, makes the next call. “I need you to pick me up. Car’s faster.”

Silence.

Then, a woman’s voice. _“Gotcha.”_

Udo violently jerks back and chucks the phone away from him, halfway away from a scream. “What the hell! The _shit_ is this!”

He knows what he’s doing.

_The worst thing for a boss to be is a kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing._

He’s been trained.

_I can help you out, you know._

He was prepared to climb to the top.

_Ambitious kids like you are seriously the cutest._

Udo lets out a terrified scream and rips open the warehouse door. He slams it behind him and limps across the dusty floors, hand clutched to his aching side. He looks wildly around him, hunting for a hiding place. He can’t help any of his men now, but there’s so many places to hide, if the sniper decides she ought to go and get help scouring the place, he can…

Udo pulls out his gun. It’s not non-lethal. Even if she doesn’t leave, he has backup.

He crawls underneath a car with a tarp covering it, drags the tarp over to cover his position, and inches over to the side so he can pull himself out at a moment’s notice.

Then he waits.

His whole body hurts, throbs, and he hears nothing. It feels like hours are crawling by, and he hears nothing. Tears are stinging at his eyes, and he hears nothing. He’s never felt so alone, and _he hears nothing._

Then the warehouse door slides open.

He stops breathing.

Easy footsteps, Udo strains to remember what different footsteps sound like, and he think these ones might be rubber soles, sneakers. His grip on his gun feels sweaty. He lets his breath out slow, takes it in slow, if only to keep from gasping.

He hears fabric shift, and Udo stills. What’s she doing? Is it even the sniper?

_**BANG.** _

An excruciating pain _rips_ through his arm, and he howls, pulling himself out from under the car. He looks back, and stares in horror at the small hole of light even as he feels a cold shock ripple through him. She had shot him through the tarp. She had known he was under the car and shot him right through the tarp without even _checking_. He lets out a sob and collapses into the wall, trying to get his hands in position to manage the gun.

It’s all lined up against him, isn’t it? Dumbass Namimori bitch with the watergun, dumbass club chairman with a chip on his shoulder deciding he ought to control the whole city _just because_ , dumbass foreign asshole coming out of nowhere and taking over his school so thoroughly he can’t even go back, dumbass sniper bitch shooting him _blind under a car_.

And a dumbass teacher who never taught him enough to deal with situations like this, giving out advice with his hair ringed in like like a fiery halo, Udo’s own personal angel who was supposed to make him _great_. Where the hell is Yamazaki now? Abandoning him and giving fuckers like Gokudera hot tips on the weapons trade?

_Ambitious kids like you…_

That’s right. He’s ambitious. He’s going to beat this. He’s going to beat all of this. He’ll load up the bodies in the car once he’s through killing this bitch.

He leaps out from behind the car, ignoring the pain, and aims the gun with one hand, ignoring the fact the kickback is going to hurt like hell. He’s prepared to kick the gun in whatever direction he falls in when he inevitably drops it. He was taught to do that too.

The sniper is a tall woman, and her thighs are prominent in her dark green tights, leading up to short denim cutoff shorts, almost bikini-short, and half-hidden by the baggy black raincoat unzipped from the bottom. Her coke-bottle glasses glint in the dim light of the grime-coated windows of the warehouse, and her dark hair is tied in a tight bun, with a spray of hair poking up from it.

Udo memorizes the appearance of the woman he’s about to kill.

And then she shoots the gun right out of his hand.

He yelps at the sharp pain vibrating through his digits, and then again when another bullet hits him in the torso, and he can tell it’s non-lethal around the same time that he realizes it doesn’t matter because it just hit his cracked ribs and _he has never been in more pain_.

Udo hits the ground with a bitten-off scream and trembles, the sensation of pain exploding from his rib and arm rocking through him. He’s definitely going into shock now. He’s lost it. He’s completely lost it.

He’s lost.

“I love how chatty middle-schoolers are,” the woman says in a husky timbre, more mature than he had expected. “Almost didn’t know you were coming! I’m glad I was paying attention. My student’s little friends are sooooo precious!”

Udo whimpers as the sniper approaches, languidly, almost childlike, one foot swinging in front of the other. She stops right in front of his face.

“Well, I guess that’s how ridiculous little gang power plays happen. That Hibari-chan didn’t get it, did he? You don’t get anywhere with just paperwork and a strong right hook. He just wanted to punish you, but that’s not how we do it down here, is it? That’s soft, for Underworld. Down in Underworld…” She leans down, takes a hold of his good arm, and grips it tight. When speaks, her voice is deep and dark and gravelly, like a wild beast’s.

“…We know we gotta break _all_ the limbs.”

And then all Udo knows is screaming.


	13. The Willpower Of A Fighting Force

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Intimate harassment of a minor (no sexual intent)

The sun is setting when Tsuna first loses his footing.

" _Hiiii!"_  Is all Tsuna can get out before a collection of empty cans collapse entirely under his weight, and he goes sliding down a mound that looked totally solid five minutes ago. He staggers, and the muscles in his chest pull painfully over his bruised ribs under the strain of his flailing.

Ryouhei, the nearest person with two arms, leaps over a discarded pile of slimy newspapers and slides over just in time to catch Tsuna by the shoulders. Tsuna's velocity knocks Ryouhei back a step, but the hands skim over  _(his back)_  to cross over his shoulders, pulling him into the hard muscles of his broad chest. Tsuna's cheek is mushed unpleasantly, and the firm edges pressing into him immediately start to ache, seeing as he has skin made of paper and muscles made of cotton candy.

"Woah there! You alright?"

"I'm fine," Tsuna grumbles. He glances up through his bangs at Ryouhei, who is…looking way too intently at him. Again. Can he not stare at him like that? Like Tsuna is the only thing in the universe in that moment, like it's  _imperative_  that he remains  _entirely_  focused on him? Why would anyone look at him like that?

The physical contact isn't light enough to make his skin crawl, because Ryouhei is far too firm in every respect, but Tsuna feels like it's too much just on principle. He peels Ryouhei's fingers off his shoulders and shuffles behind the comforting tallness of Takeshi, who snickers and makes a big show of hiding Tsuna.

"WE'RE TURNING IN FOR THE NIGHT!" Hayato's voice screams out over the beach. "I'VE BEEN ADVISED THAT A STRAY PIECE OF METAL IS GOING TO GUT SOMEONE IF WE PRESS PAST DARK!"

"Well it  _will_ ," Hana calls at a more moderate decibel near the shoreline.

"Finally. We've been out here for the entire day. Over eight hours," Tsuna huffs.

"Well we took a three-hour break around lunch…" Takeshi muses.

"Yeah, but still. It must be what, eight o'clock now?" Tsuna picks his way back to the stable safety of the grass, grunting as his rapid travel pulls at his already-twinging rib. Ryouhei helps the lone female member of their team — who a helpful student named as Uenohara Suzu, who is working with them on account of her asthma — off a particularly tall pile of trash and carries her all the way onto the grass in one bull-headed charge. Tsuna would ask him to do the same for him, but all that rampaging would probably be hell on his injury, and also,  _touching_.

"ALRIGHT EVERYONE, WE'LL BE HEADING TO THE BATHS! FOLLOW IN AN ORDERLY LINE BEHIND ME OR YOUR TEACHER!" Hayato continues to holler, walking backwards as the students slowly make their way off the garbage pile and chuck their bags into the bin.

"God, he's way too good at this for a first-year delinquent," Hana mutters darkly, rejoining them at the bank.

"He's trying his best, and his best happens to be incredible," Tsuna says. He's decided the less people he tells about the whole _'dynamite-flinging mafioso with an official recommendation from someone who is at the very least friendly with the mafia'_  thing, the better.

Hayato leads the group with Miki hovering around him like a satellite. After about a minute, the red-haired teacher — Yamazaki — comes with his half of the students, wanders over, and slings one arm over Miki's shoulder, leaning in close. Hayato notices this, and starts kicking Yamazaki in the shins. When Yamazaki turns to speak, he yanks out two fistfuls of dynamite. Yamazaki points something out, and Hayato looks around wildly, before fumbling to put away half of his left-hand fistful and pull out a lighter, which Yamazaki instantly confiscates.

"Isn't he supposed to be a teacher?" Hana asks, squinting at the show.

Tsuna just shrugs.

They all stop in front of a cheap-looking bathhouse on the edge of town. Yamazaki is still clinging to Miki, who looks less scared and more like he wants to just rot into putrid nothingness. Tsuna can relate. Hayato climbs up on the edge of the flowerbox in front of the doors and looks out over the swarm, visibly counting under his breath. Satisfied, he folds his arms.

"BATH RULES! THIS IS THE ONLY ONE WE CAN AFFORD FOR A WEEK STRAIGHT, SO IF YOU'RE ROUGHHOUSING IN THERE, YOU'RE BASKING IN YOUR OWN STINK! IF THE BATHS HAVE THEIR OWN RULES, FOLLOW THEM! AND ACTUALLY WASH YOURSELVES. THE SCHOOL IS PAYING FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T USUALLY AFFORD THIS, SO DON'T SKIMP ON THE SHAMPOO OR WHATEVER. I WANT YOU SPARKLING."

Yamazaki leans over to whisper something in Miki's ear. Miki visibly curls away from him with an edge of frustrated discomfort. Hayato zeroes in on this, looking like he just smelled something rancid.

"YAMAZAKI WILL BE SUPERVISING," Hayato continues, still glaring at the teacher.

Yamazaki finally looks up. "Hwa?"

"MYSELF AND THE MANAGERS OF THIS VACATION WILL BE GOING TO A DIFFERENT ESTABLISHMENT, WHERE WE WILL COMMUNICATE ON HOW TO BEST MANAGE OUR VOLUNTEERING EFFORTS!"

Hayato jumps down, pries Yamazaki off his second, and shoves Miki bodily towards Ryouhei, who catches him effortlessly.

"What about the girls' side? Who's managing that end?" Yamazaki asks.

"Uh," says Hayato. He looks around urgently, and then shoves a finger at Uenohara Suzu, who was watching the whole thing with bland disinterest next to Tsuna. "She will!"

Suzu steps up and gives the rest of the group a dispassionate look. Hayato smirks triumphantly at Yamazaki.

The Koyama students file into the building, while Hayato marches Tsuna, Miki, Ryouhei, Hana, Takeshi, and…

"What is  _he_  doing here?" Hayato barks, nodding towards Shouichi, who flinches and makes an odd little 'eep' sound.

"Uhmm, he's my weapons manager,  _duh_ ," Hana says with an exaggerated eyeroll.

"Yeah right, like you're going to talk about  _guns_. All you know how to do is gossip, right?" Hayato snorts.

Hana lets out an inarticulate shrieking growl and stamps her foot impatiently. "What is your  _problem_  with me! You mad because I'm a girl? Because I'm running my mouth? What is it?"

"I don't have any patience for half-cocked women who think they can antagonize the boss!"

"I'm not  _antagonizing_  him, god! Why do you keep treating him like he's so delicate?"

"He's more valuable than you can even imagine! I wouldn't expect someone like  _you_  to understand that!"

"You wanna say that again, punk?"

"So you're finally showing your true colours? I won't let you mess with the Boss!"

The rest of the group watch with a spectator's polite separation. Tsuna messages his brow and sighs deeply. "I can't believe this…"

"Man, he's really protective! Well, at least you know he cares, right?" Takeshi laughs, elbowing Tsuna playfully. Or he would have, if he didn't have elbows made of knives and their height difference wasn't so profound; instead, he slams his bony appendage right into Tsuna's temple. Tsuna drops like a sack of potatoes.

"Woah! Sawada!" Ryouhei shouts.

"Oh— man, I'm so sorry, everyone in the team likes roughhousing, I wasn't thinking—" Takeshi quickly helps Tsuna up, one hand bracing his shoulder and one hand in Tsuna's own. Tsuna squints at the horizon. This is the exact sort of thing he had expected would happen on this trip, if he has to be honest. The fact that things haven't gotten any more miserable than being hot and sweaty in a pile of garbage and tripping once was starting to unsettle him. No point in getting irritated. He's gotten basketballs to the head that sent him reeling longer than that.

He looks down at his hand when he's back on his feet again. Takeshi's hand is way bigger than he thought. He has long, rough fingers, the callouses and slight fraying of the skin scraping slightly against Tsuna's own soft, unworked palms. Tsuna's hands are tiny in comparison, stubby fingers with stubby nails, pallid and childish.

Tsuna frowns and pulls his hand away from Takeshi under pretense of curling his fingers around the now-lukewarm ice pack lodged in his shirt.

"You fall all wrong!" Ryouhei shouts in Tsuna's ear half a second later. Tsuna shrieks and staggers back. "You're just going to hurt yourself more like that! It's extremely unsafe! You can't hold your elbows up like that when you fall, you'll break your arm! And the most important thing is to protect your head, like this!" Ryouhei holds his arms to cover either side of his head, as an example.

Tsuna regards him blankly.

Ryouhei falters, and his arms drop slowly. His mouth pinches. "…You're going to make Kyouko worry."

Tsuna nods. "…Sorry. I'll keep it in mind."

Hana and Hayato hadn't noticed the problem through the intensity of their fighting, and are nearly two blocks away at this point. Hana seems fully confident in Hayato not hurting her as long as Tsuna tells him not to, or maybe as long as Ryouhei is here, seeing as he's the one who detained Hayato last time. Takeshi makes a small wincing noise when he sees them in the distance.

"They really don't get along, huh," he says.

"Hacchan doesn't get along with anyone. I don't think Hayato is interested in getting along with anyone he hasn't personally vetted first," Tsuna muses.

"Yikes."

"Don't worry, I'll break them up if they start getting physical!" Ryouhei assures them. He takes off after the squabbling pair, leaving Tsuna, Takeshi, Shouichi, and Miki.

Tsuna calculates which person he is most willing to talk to right now, and decides on Miki, who appears too perpetually terrified to even consider breaking off a conversation he doesn't want to be in. Perfect for information-gathering purposes, and good practice for talking to normal people, which he may actually have to do if this keeps up. He swoops in next to him. "So, how's Hayato been treating you?"

"H-Huh? Oh— I, uhm…fine?" Miki strangles out.

"Hm. You don't seem to like Yamazaki much."

"Oh…uh…" Miki's expression firms out, and tilts his face away. "…Not…really."

"Why's that?"

"P-Personal reasons?"

"He seems to be clinging to you a lot."

"Uhm. Yeah, he does that."

"To just you?"

"Well…" Tsuna can't see Miki's eyes, but he's getting the impression he's glaring very hard at a distant tree. "Er. Yes."

Tsuna tries to think of what Hayato would want to know, but would be too menacing to actually get out of Miki. "Is he threatening you?"

"No. He's…he's just being…affectionate."

"In a 'call in someone with scars and a crowbar' way?"

Miki startles. "Oh! No. Just in a— in a normal way."

"That's not normal. In some schools, teachers aren't even allowed to touch students."

"Y-You can't do that in Koyama, the students are too…well…it's nothing. He's just being… _friendly_." Miki grimaces even as he says it.

"But you don't want him to."

Miki wraps his arms around himself, and his face pulls. Hana and Hayato round a corner with Ryouhei on their tail, meaning they probably won't notice that the rest of their group is so far behind for a few more minutes. Takeshi is watching Tsuna's interrogation speculatively, and Shouichi looks slightly horrified.

"He's…uhm…we're actually…" Miki scratches the back of his head, and his cheeks are working up into a blush. "H-He's my…I mean…"

"He's your…?"

Miki ducks his head, exhibiting the blush on his ears. "…Yamazaki-sensei is my, uh. He's family."

Tsuna makes a small noise of recognition. "So he's embarrassing you with his obvious family bias."

"Sort of. We just d-don't get on, with the rest of the family. Me and my m-mom, I mean, we don't. But he keeps…" Miki looks away. "He's the one who told me not to go to school to begin with, but…He's never, uhm, respected my boundaries, well, ever? And I think he's t-trying to g-g-get my mom to go home through me. I think s-something must have happened, to make him change h-his mind."

"Ah. I can see why you're mad." If someone did that with Tsuna and his mom, he'd  _definitely_  call in some guy with scars and a crowbar. A very, very heavy crowbar. Or maybe a sledgehammer. He doesn't know how to call in someone like that, but he's pretty sure that one housewife from two houses down — Sugiura-san — does.

"I-It's okay! He's not threatening me, o-or coercing, he's just bothering, a-a-a-a-and," Miki takes a deep breath, "The world isn't, it's not scary. The president p-promised me he wouldn't let anyone bother me, so…"

"Hayato's a good guy."

Miki gives Tsuna a small, agreeable smile.

They round the corner, and all four of them are forced to bear witness to the squabble's logical conclusion; Ryouhei detaining a dynamite-laden Hayato, and pushing Hana away with his leg to keep her from kicking him.

"How unladylike, Hacchan," Tsuna says loudly.

Hana flushes and abruptly straightens, looking pointedly away from Tsuna. Hayato snarls at her, and then his entire personality flips when he grins roguishly at Tsuna. Tsuna cannot believe he can pull off roguish grinning. How is he attracting such obsessive and socially intrusive people, who also happen to be stupidly good-looking? He should have hit his limit with Kyouko, but now he's got a cluster of them. _Unfair._

"Boss! This is the place! It's bound to rejuvenate you and help with your healing and physical therapy!" Hayato says, not unlike an infomercial.

He gestures (from over Ryouhei's arm lock) to the building they're standing in front of; not a bathhouse, but a hot spring. It's not very expensive-looking, like the one Tsuna can see settled in the beginning rolls of the mountain in the distance, but it definitely looks better than the large but very ramshackle public bath the rest of the students went into. The windows are painted with detailed illustrations Tsuna is used to seeing in old ukiyo-e, and a sliding door, in stark contrast with the western doors around it. It certainly does look refreshing, and very traditional.

"Haha, wow! This place looks awesome! Did you pick this out before you came?" Takeshi looks around in cheerful awe.

"Yeah, it was on short notice, but I knew this place was perfect the moment I saw it," Hayato says, rubbing his nose in self-conscious pride. It's a little ridiculous, with Ryouhei's arms settled under his armpits. "Normally I'd say I'd only get the best for the Boss, but since that Kyouko girl wanted to keep everyone around him, I had to improvise."

"Not bad. Thanks." Tsuna nods.

Hayato grins and yanks himself out of Ryouhei's grip. He barges into the building, and the rest of them follow.

The inside is significantly more polished, and impeccably tidy. Hayato is already at the counter, paying for the visit. They're not staying the night, so it's affordable. The clerk keeps looking at them, though, eyes cold and speculative.

Finally, she speaks. "You the kids cleaning up the beach?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah," says Hayato.

"Then you better not stick your neck out too much. It's not safe, nowadays. You see the streets?" She nods towards the door.

Tsuna has. They're empty. Not odd at seven in the morning or eight at night, but during their three hour break at midday…

"You're playing with fire, coming here."

"Trust me, lady. If I know anything, it's how to play with fire," Hayato snorts. He gestures to the rest of them. "Come on."

Shouichi lags a bit, and Tsuna turns to him. He's been pretty quiet for a while now.

"You coming?"

"Uhm…sure. Sorry. But…" Shouichi shuffles forward, glancing back at the clerk and clutching his stomach tightly. "…Are you sure we're going to be okay? I mean, getting warned off like that…and  _someone_  must have put that trash there, right? Someone with a lot of i-influence, and probably even enough money to hire someone to…to…to take us out or something!"

Tsuna's mouth quirks. "You're probably not used to the Underworld, huh."

"What?! _Of course not!_ "

"Well, most everyone else here is." Tsuna turns to follow Hayato again. "These guys…they're violent without limit. If the enemy holds back even a little bit, everyone would just raze them to the ground."

"Isn't that scary?"

"That's why you sound like you're not used to the Underworld." Tsuna tilts his head back to look at Shouichi. "Isn't it obviously going to be the safest surrounded by the most dangerous people in the room?"

 

* * *

 

It really isn't.

Maybe Shouichi is biased; the most dangerous situations he's had to deal with is Miura-san, who was the only adult willing to take his blog seriously and yet ended up being a surprise criminal (and…gun teacher? Apparently?), and Umi, who is locked up somewhere in Europe, and as far as he knows, any dangerous things that happen in her life are discussed with her infinitely more competent European contacts.

Is her life even all that dangerous? Maybe she's just in an abusive household with rich parents and sent the rings off to spite them. She doesn't like talking about it, and always changes the subject when Shouichi asks. Penpals are hard to get an answer out of.

Shouichi himself is best just as a friend, a passing fancy for people with lives more exciting than his. He's a boring guy. He knows he is.

_These people are not boring._

The worst of them is probably Sawada Tsuna-something, the guy they're all gravitating around, like planets around a sun. He doesn't have much of a presence though; he's more like a black hole, only just barely dense enough to keep the solar system sustained, but still a clear  _absence_. No one else seems to notice it, and if they do, Shouichi thinks it might actually be  _relaxing_  to them. Understandable, because every single one of them is keyed up beyond all belief.

Miura-san's student, Kurokawa…first name unknown (he's heard it a few times, but hadn't retained it yet), is the most normal of the lot, but she's a razor edge slicing into everyone around her, extracting their juices like a vampire bat. The only one she doesn't seem to be drinking up is the loudest, Gokudera, who she mostly just hates. There's nothing much of Sawada to drink up, though.

Gokudera Hayate (?) seems to be some form of criminal in a position of immense authority in his school, even more than your average student council president. He's also an authority in Sawada's life, and is always being an overbearing doting older brother at any given moment. The guy is just  _burning_  with glorious purpose, and since Sawada contributes nothing to existence, he's free to rampage. Literally, Shouichi doesn't even have to read too much into it, Gokudera is making these excessive decisions and actions on behalf of Sawada, splashing around in the water and roaring, while Sawada just kind of blinks at him and goes back to sinking down until only his nose is over the surface. He's spacing out a lot, actually.

The least scary one is Yamamoto Takeshi, the only one Shouichi knows the name of because they went to the same elementary school and their school's baseball coach absolutely lost his shit when Yamamoto suddenly and without warning decided that  _no, actually, all those times I said baseball was just a hobby was a fake thing I made up, I love baseball, I eat baseballs every day for breakfast, let_ _'s go to nationals, because I love baseball_. And then they went to nationals. Yamamoto seemed to do that a lot, like the time he learned he was popular with girls and went out with two in sequence like it was  _incredibly important_  that he went out on dates. Shouichi had almost forgotten about him, since he never meshed with popular people and they went to different middle schools.

Yamamoto is, much like Kurokawa, really observant. Not in a 'give me your information' vampire bat sort of way, like how she's currently drilling the blond one for information, but more like he just…sees a lot. Shouichi has gotten the weirdest impression that Yamamoto knows everything there is to know about him, which Shouichi finds uncomfortable, because he's hardly spoken to anyone except Kurokawa and Sasagawa, and mostly out of earshot.

Sasagawa Something-Or-Other is just…really excessive, basically all of the time. Like Gokudera, maybe, but less angry. He has the most positive energy out of all of them, and effectively works as the group's collective older brother, peace-keeping and fretting over the weaker members (Miki and Sawada). He boxes, Sasagawa told him, and he really wants to know if Miura-san can make a boxing dummy for their club. Shouichi is too afraid to ask. Mostly because she would probably oblige.

Sasagawa doesn't seem to be calmed by Sawada, actually. He's just really amped up as a rule. It's kind of intimidating.

The last one, 'Miki', is scary.

Not the person, just…him, being around, almost in exact inverse to the way Sawada is scary. A supernova instead of a black hole. Looking at him burns. Or being looked at by him. Shouichi can't tell; Miki's eyes keep dancing around so often. Miki has anxiety too, but less of the haunting dread kind that plagues Shouichi, and more of the jumpy, mistrustful terror kind that usually comes with agoraphobia and helicopter parents.

Miki is more blatantly soothed by Sawada's presence; he sits near him, and slides closer every now and then whenever he can't cling to Gokudera (because Gokudera has gotten up to scream over the divider at Kurokawa, who is in the women's section right now). He doesn't really acknowledge him, though. Maybe Shouichi is reading too much into it.

…God these people are terrifying.

Shouichi is too nervous and sick with aforementioned dread to strike up a conversation, and Kurokawa isn't around, so he's stuck half-submerged, watching the group carefully. He's gotten better at reading people; when Umi sent him the rings, she told him she was doing it to keep them away from her family, and Shouichi thought that was a cool secret agent sort of thing, so he got really into learning how to watch people. Usually in libraries, where people are less likely to catch him and call him a freak.

He rubs his thumb over Umi's necklace. He had fantasies about saving her in a time of desperation, but now that he's around actual dangerous weirdos, ones that are only middle-schoolers, he's having doubts. All in all, she'll probably send someone to pick the rings up again once she's out of her abusive household, and then they'll just move on to phone calls. Shouchi's spy fantasy was so dumb. He can't believe he's been so stupid and childish until now.

"Will you kids quiet down?" Someone shouts. Shouichi looks up, and immediately dunks himself to eye level when he sees a man covered in tattoos. Yakuza?!

"Why don't you quiet down, asshole! I'm  _relegating_!"

"Relegating your duties because you can't  _handle_  any of them!" Kurokawa hollers.

"SHUT UP!"

"I don't appreciate you being noisy during my relaxation time, y'hear?" The man snarls.

Miki lifts himself up and turns to look at the man. "…You're right. We're very noisy. It's very annoying."

"Right! So if you get it, then—"

"It must be annoying to deal with us.  **Y** ou should come back later."

The man opens his mouth. Closes it.

Then he turns on his heel and leaves.

Miki puts his hands over his eyes and sinks down below the water, and Shouichi wishes he could find some way to avoid these terrifying people. Or at least some way to stick around Kurokawa and no one else.

It would be nice if he could remember her first name.

 

* * *

 

Sasagawa Kyouko arrives at the school around 7:30, and the first thing Tetsuya does is give her a transparent riot shield.

"As much as I appreciate you helping us with this, the truth of the matter is, you'll be a burden if you can't protect yourself," Tetsuya tells her.

Thankfully, she takes it with uncanny seriousness and nods firmly at him. "I understand."

"Excellent." Tetsuya turns to the school. "We'll be going in through the windows. We'll have to break them, so expect an early fight. Bulletproof vests only keep the bullet from going in; the power of the impact is still going to bruise, possibly break bones. If you're not ready for pain, fall back. Remember, the goal is to confiscate the weapons; you don't have to fight them. Detaining is ideal."

The other ten members of the Committee all nod.

"Oh! By the way!" Sasagawa takes the shield, plants it in the ground, and starts digging into her overstuffed backpack. She pulls out a small box. "I packed bentou boxes for everyone!"

Tetsuya lets out an exasperated sigh at the roar of over-excited teenage boys, and steps aside to let them at her. They have to wait until it's completely dark, and while the sun has already set, the sky is still light enough that their silhouettes would be excessively obvious. It won't take longer than half an hour, but it he can keep the boys from being tense…

Tetsuya stands vigil over their temporary holding place, staring down the school. From what he can guess, Udo is behind this. Apparently,  _discipline_  wasn't enough to stop him. The problem is, though, that even if he's circulating weapons, he's going to need a supplier; he's obviously not involved in the existing weapons trade going on, or else he'd circulate the weapons right back into his possession. Which means someone entirely unrelated to all the parties Tetsuya is currently tracking is the one behind this.

"U-Uhm…Kusakabe-san?"

Tetsuya looks down to see Sasagawa looking up innocently through her lashes, holding a bentou box. He's completely immune to the look, of course; at this point, he can't be swayed by anything that isn't a young boy with unfortunate predilections towards violence and spreading misfortune upon the populace like a plague in mortal form.

"It's alright. I already had dinner," he assures her.

"Oh…okay. Tell me if you get hungry, though, okay? You look like you're going to pull another late-nighter," she says.

More like all-nighter. He doesn't think he'll be able to sleep as long as Kyouya's father is still in Japan. He doubts Kyouya will either. He still gives her a polite smile.

"VICE-CHAIRMAN!" Spikes over the comm line, and Tetsuya flinches and curses under the breath at the sudden sound of Komori Keitarou's voice.

He presses the button on the radio around his wrist. "What is it?"

"We're not the first people to hit the school,"Komori breathes.

"Shit— Sasagawa, I want you on lookout with Sumita," Tetsuya barks, nodding towards the boy. He has a crush on her, so he should be putting more effort into protecting her. On his end, he waves his men in and barges in through the front door, plan be damned. Komori drops down from his position in the window to join them, and gestures upstairs.

They go in diamond formation up the stairs, flashlights skimming over the near-black halls lit only by the steadily dying blue of the evening sky, and Komori gestures to the art room. Tetsuya gestures for the rest to be quiet and stay put, and opens the door.

He's not surprised by what he sees.

Squares cut into the floor against dust, surrounded by footprints; someone moved a series of boxes. Likely their weapons stash. The room is bare and colourless, except for the massive circular emblem of a 6-point maple leaf set over a mountain with a rising sun, all painted in thick red lines.

"They got busted by the Akiyama-kai," Tetsuya mutters. He turns to the rest, and turns on his transmission to tell the two waiting at the bottom. "Alright, that's a wrap. The family's being good to us. We're heading home."

A few sighs of relief. A few complaints. Personally, Tetsuya isn't sure which he should be feeling; relief that there's no problem to deal with, or tension that he doesn't have an outlet anymore. Maybe he should be glad he's not putting the untrained civilian girl in unnecessary danger. Kyouya would have a fit. Barring punishments, which can heal, a Namimori student coming to harm is unacceptable.

They head back down, and Sumita rushes to meet them, red-faced and sweating bullets. Sasagawa is frowning.

They split apart naturally, calling out farewells to each other and thanking Sasagawa for her bentou, but Sasagawa herself doggedly follows Tetsuya with a laser-like intensity. She certainly resembles her brother, in some respects.

"It's time to go home. Won't your parents be worried?"

"My curfew is at ten," she says mulishly, matching his long strides with a harried pace.

"I don't need your assistance right now."

"Sure you do!" She bounds past him and starts marching backwards. "You need help with  _something,_  right?"

"Nothing you can help me with," Tetsuya growls.

"I don't believe you!" Sasagawa jumps back a bit to avoid being overtaken by Tetsuya's speed. "Or at least, I think what you think is wrong."

"How do you know what I think?"

"I think what you think is really obvious! So…" She stumbles when she can't keep up anymore, but then just darts back up to try to walk side-by-side again. "If there's anything you need help with—"

"I don't. Need. Help." Tetsuya grits.

"…Well…" She stares intently at him; Tetsuya can see her in his peripheral vision. Her legs are moving quickly yet gracefully, the result of internalizing more about poise than battle efficiency. Her expression is wide and open, and her tone is focused, needling, begging.

Nothing Tetsuya knows how to deal with.

"…Well…I do!"

He looks down at her.

"Come again."

"I need help!" She turns to look at the street ahead of her and works her jaw. "…Onii-san…and Tsuna too…they have something motivating them. They're focused. They have objectives. But I'm just living life as it comes. I don't have any idea what I'm going to do with my future."

"You haven't even finished your first semester of middle school yet. You don't have to."

"That doesn't matter! What's important is…" Sasagawa strides forward with pure determination, and looks at him with eyes that seem to glow. "Can you help me become stronger?"

Kyouya's shape seems to echo through Namimori, pushed and pulled and torn apart under the earth, where Tetsuya can't reach him, and all he's ever wanted to do was guide him so he wouldn't have to be in this position in the first place. He was without guide himself when he was younger, so he knows how powerful knowing what you're doing can make you.

And now he's powerless.

And now Kyouya can't be reached.

And now all that's left for him is waiting and waiting and  _three more._

He needs an outlet.

"…How do you mean?"

 

* * *

 

"So this is the one getting all the weapons?"

Kouyou Naoki stands over the beaten body of the boy that had been captured. Large, tall, bleached hair. Developed early for someone his age. Would make a good foot soldier, he thinks. But then again, wouldn't that just be thinking like his dear honourable father? As an heir, he supposes he ought to be putting something fresh into the Akiyama-kai. Maybe more kindness. Maybe more cruelty.

"Took a while for him to break," says Miura Fuyumi. Freelancer. Naoki wrinkles his nose. He hates working with free hires.  _No honour amongst thieves._  "Surprised me, really."

"Torture is a terribly ineffective way to extract information."

"Oh no, the torture was just to tell him he's been a bad boy~" She stretches out languidly across the floor, playing with a lock of dark hair. "I got the info on his operation the old-fashioned way."

"And what way would that be?"

"Not telling~"

 _No honour amongst thieves_ , he repeats in his head. "Of course. You've confiscated all the weapons and tagged those in possession?"

"Sure did! At this hour, your family should be done combing Namimori. It's all done."

"I see. You'll be paid handsomely."

"Nice!" She leaps to her feet and dusts herself off. "Have fun doing whatever with this one. I've got a more interesting situation to focus on."

Naoki quirks a brow. "I cannot possibly imagine what it could be."

" _Nyorohoho~_ I wonder why you think you have any right to know?"

What a terrible annoyance.

The freelancer heads off to get her payment, and Naoki leans down to tilt the boy's head up to inspect him closely. Threads of crimson hair fall past his eyes, and the boy's glassy gaze is drawn to them. An uncommon colour in these parts. Most people's hair tends to just settle around  _ginger_. It's a fairly quick way to spot a Kouyou, in this part of Japan. Naoki knows Udo is intimately familiar with it.

"Poor soul, so beaten, so far fallen," he mutters under his breath. "Pulled in by our ebb and flow."

The boy's breathing is laboured, the dancing of his eyes confused.

"Don't worry. You've proven yourself so honourable, so just. We have a place for you yet."

 

* * *

 

It's a confused blur, especially in the darkness, half-asleep and unsure of what's going on; first Tsuna is aware of the hard form under his arms, his torso, pressed flush all against him, and he thinks 'I'm spooning Takeshi', and his response to this fact is sent spinning into a disorienting oblivion as he sees the bobbing lights outside, and hears yelling, arguing, screams, and he finally realizes that was what woke him up to begin with.

Tsuna gently sits up, careful not to put any pulling weight on his torso. He tries to concentrate more on what's happening outside. Rustling, urges for everyone to get out, barked insults. Laughter. The screaming is coming from the students.

"Attack," Tsuna breathes. He turns over and shakes Takeshi urgently. "Hey! Wake up!"

His tent rustles. Tsuna gasps and crawls away from the entrance, kicking Takeshi on his way back. Takeshi groans and pulls himself to his knees.

"What…?"

"We're under attack!" Tsuna whispers. The sound of chaos is getting louder.

Takeshi's shadow just sits there. "By who?"

The entrance unzips, spilling golden light inside, and behind Takeshi is a man holding a wooden baseball bat, surrounded by men holding flashlights.

They sneer. "By us."

Takeshi makes to jump back, but he forgets his injured arm and falls over without the support. The man grabs him by the ankle and pulls; Tsuna reaches out and attempts to pull him back, but that requires upper body strain, and he falters almost instantly at the sudden explosion of pain in his torso. He swallows back a scream, and Takeshi is yanked out of his reach, but Takeshi makes good use of his good arm by sliding it into his bags and pulling out…

His baseball bat.

Takeshi spins it to hold it like a knife primed to stab and jabs down at his captor. The end of the bat connects with his eye, and he releases Takeshi with a howl. Takeshi doesn't stop there, though; he rolls to his feet, holds the bat properly, and knocks another man down with an upwards swing. Tsuna quickly digs into their bags for something to help with; he breaths a sigh of relief at the sight of his knuckledusters.

"What the hell is this kid?" One of the surviving men barks.

Takeshi shows him with a heavy swing that  _crack_ s against his jaw.

"Don't over-exert yourself," Tsuna mutters, slipping his own weapon onto his fingers and looking around at their new battlefield. The defeat hadn't been noticed yet, and it's no surprise why.

Countless adults are yanking students out of their tents and dragging them to the road. The whole area is lit with torches and flashlights, and they're all wielding weapons. There are kids crying, kids yelling at their assailants, kids trying to run and getting caught, and under the streetlamps, kids being threatened with guns—

"Now this is bad," Takeshi grunts, drawing himself up to full height. "…Sorry, but I don't think I can hold back."

"I don't think I can fight at all," Tsuna replies, staring at his knuckledusters. It's the same reason he had gone to the hospital in the first place, and now…now he's injured on top of that.

"Don't worry! You don't have to. Just try to keep everyone calm. You've got a pretty commanding aura, you know?" Takeshi grins.

Tsuna flushes, and takes off.

There are barely forty students, and way more adults around here, so it's no easy feat actually preparing an escape, but trying is the only thing that will convince everyone to keep going. If they see everyone else buckling, they'll buckle too. So Tsuna dances around the small encampment and finds the easiest possible target; right near the trees, someone trying to pull out a taller kid by the wrist.

Tsuna ignores the ache and sharp twisting pain in order to run towards them, and without hesitation, before the man is even aware Tsuna is there, he slides in on damp grass, pulls his fist back, and slams the metal rings directly into the man's crotch.

It's a cheap shot, but it works; he's down.

"Get out of here!" Tsuna shouts, and the boy goes running into the woods right next to them.

He hears a girly shriek, and he circles the tent just in time to see a guy trying to pull Hana out by her hair. He moves to help her, but in the end, doesn't need to; she grabs something with her toes, tosses it in the air, and catches it in her palm while the guy holding her is looking away. When he looks back down at her, she aims and fires. It's pepper spray.

Hana goes back into the tent and pulls out her two tenants out, yelling at them over her victim's screaming. Tsuna feels indirectly threatened by her.

Something cold wraps around his ankle.

Tsuna tries to run away, but it's too late; the man he had given a silver nutshot has a vice-like grip, and is somehow managing to get to his feet, albeit on shaky legs.

"You…little…shit…"

"Hhh…" He can't yell properly. He's too hesitant to try, with the punishing his chest has given him for even the simplest of tasks. He tries punching the man again, but he just catches Tsuna's fist.

"You wanna fuck with me, kiddo?"

Tsuna makes a wheezing noise and tries to pull himself away again, his panic spiking. Everything is confusion and noise and he can't plan through the dizzying cloud of sensation beyond  _get me away_ , even as the man pulls out a knife—

A wooden paddle is driven into the man's neck, and the grip on Tsuna's ankle goes slack.

Tsuna slowly looks up to see the teacher, Yamazaki, looking at him with pale brown eyes that seem to shine gold in the flickering light. Tsuna takes a step back, uncertain in the face of the intensity the teacher is regarding him with, and the dangerous way he's swinging the paddle.

"Don't worry," Yamazaki says, soft and all-too-intimate, "we take care of our own, y'know?"

"I…I'm not a Koyama student," Tsuna whispers hoarsely.

Yamazaki just gives him an unsettling fox-grin and dances back out into the battlefield.

" _Tsuna!"_

Tsuna spins around to see Hana splitting off from her group; the girl with the hair in her eyes is running into the woods, and Suzu is running out into the battlefield wielding a baton.

"What the  _hell_  is going on!" She continues when she gets close enough to truly rail into him.

"I'm…I'm not sure." Tsuna looks around in a panic, trying to pull his thoughts together enough to make rational observations. "I…I think…they're trying to chase us out. They're putting kids on the road. I think they're going to burn the tents…once everyone's out of the area."

"Ooohh my god." Hana takes a deep breath and swallows down obvious tears.

"You can run too, you know."

"No, it's…I mean, if everyone escapes, they'll still burn our things, right? And no one looks hurt." She turns to follow Takeshi carving a path through to the other side of the encampment. "Yet."

"I should help—" Tsuna starts, but it seems _everyone_  is awake now.

"WHAT D'YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" Comes a rough bellow, and Ryouhei punches a man past three rows of tents.

Hayato emerges casually, dynamite stuck between his fingers, and he stops next to Tsuna and Hana. "Since we're on offense, I want you to protect the Boss," he nods.

"How are you on offense?" Hana frowns.

Hayato holds up a finger.

Eight people explode one after the other, engulfed in a light dusting of flame that erupts and goes out all at once, just enough to incapacitate.

"What the _hell_ ," Hana shrieks.

"Too dangerous to toss them. Anyway. If the boss is hurt?  _It_ _'s your head_ ," Hayato points urgently at Hana, and then he leaps into the fray too.

Hana and Tsuna carefully pick across the area, avoiding the concentration collecting around their four hard-hitters — Takeshi, Ryouhei, Hayato, and Yamazaki — and pointing students in the direction of the woods. Tsuna feels his skin crawling with the possibility that they could be grabbed at any time, and they'd be helpless against anyone who isn't literally made of paper, but the fights seem to be drawing a lot of fire. Hana is the one who is on the verge of bawling, but she still looks a lot more emotionally stable than Tsuna feels.

"What about the kids on the street?" Hana whispers.

"I…I don't know…" Tsuna gasps back. He feels light-headed.

"Okay, calm down. Listen, hide in the garbage. I have an idea."

Tsuna swallows and nods. He can see what might be Miki running into the woods too, and wonders why Hana wouldn't tell him to follow. Does she know these men are going to go after them?

"They aren't going to hurt us," Hana says, and he doesn't know if she's talking to him or herself.

* * *

Hana swings by her tent again, ducking to avoid being seen by the men still fighting with the boys, and pulls out her second bag. She thought she wouldn't need this, but…Well, even if this is just scare tactics, everyone is bound to be less traumatized if this night ends in anything but fear and misery. She takes a deep breath and sprints into the woods.

There are about five students lingering within the first five metre stretch. She shakes her head at them and makes a sharp turn, back towards the street, but distant enough that no one can grab her right away if she's spotted. If they see her, she'll go right back in those woods. She's pretty sure if she told a bunch of terrified delinquents to beat on one guy, they'd go full force.

When she explodes out of the brush, there's no one to stop her. She turns to watch the ones guarding the students under the orange glow of the street lamps, but they're not looking her way, more focused on the fights and watching their prisoners. Hana chokes back a sob at the first wave of relief, but refuses to relax. She hits the buildings on the other side of the street, and catches her hand on one of the noticeable traits she had picked up about the building; a fire escape.

Not close enough, though. She goes up the street and runs across again, and there's even more fire escapes around these parts. She doesn't know what it is about Miyazawa businesses and ladders, but holy  _hell_  is it ever convenient.

Hana climbs up to the safety of the rooftop, and some of her anxiety and terror releases. Her hands don't shake as much. She swallows, takes a moment to collect herself, and sets off at a running leap to the edge of the building. She stumbles, and her bare feet scrape painfully against the rough brick of the side of the next building, but she still makes it. Hana throws her bag over and pulls herself up onto the perfect vantage point.

"I'm going to kill her," she mutters under her breath, dangerously close to a sob. "It's her fault I'm doing this…I'm going to kill her…I'm going to die and come back from the grave and kill her for teaching me to be this dumb…"

She tears open the zipper of the bag, and starts assembling the non-lethal sniper rifle.

 

* * *

 

Miki organizes twenty-one students in the forest with urgent whispered instructions, driving on pure altruistic intent, because all his instincts know right now is that behind every tree could be a huge man with a weapon ready to yank them out onto the street, possibly to be shot.

Irie Shouichi seems to be more in-control of his terror, at least. He's gripping his stomach, but he's whispering rapidfire mobilization plans next to Miki, a warm and welcome presence in the President's absence. Miki would fall apart without that kind of assistance.

They set everyone up in a wall, with instructions to attack anyone who tries to go for them. There shouldn't be more than two or three at once, more than enough for twenty students to overpower, but he doesn't want anyone to get accidentally murdered. The students are as scared as he is. He knows terrified violence can get… _bad_.

Miki sits behind the wall with Shouichi curled up in a ball and leaning against a tree, trying and failing to think of self-calming exercises. The outside world is  _clearly not safe_. Eventually, he's just reduced to reassuring himself that  _the President can take care of it_. He took over the school in one day. He fights high-schoolers. He pushes teachers around. He'll take care of it.

"What the hell is going on?" A kid near him asks. Many are asking much the same. Miki desperately wants to have the answer to that question, but he doesn't know anything except informed guesses.

"Scare tactics," Irie says out loud, startling Miki. His voice is weak and creaking, but loud in comparison to everyone else's whispering. "They're trying to get the kids out of the tents so they can burn them without hurting anybody. They want us out. Didn't you notice there were no citizens out on the streets today? No one helping with the cleanup?"

"They're keeping people away," another nods. "Should we go back?"

"They might attack us if we cause too much trouble," Irie croaks.

"Then we…then we stay," Miki says softly.

Shouichi nods. Many of the students square their shoulders. They've already gotten used to hostile environments; Koyama affects you quickly. Even quicker if you didn't come from a great home.

A shadow starts in towards them. Tall. Broad. Adult. Miki's breath catches in his throat.

One of the boys pulls out a switchblade. How grim.

"Is this everyone?" The shadow calls out, and Miki lets his breath out all at once when he realizes it's just their teacher.

"Yamazaki-sensei!" Many of their wall cry, and some almost leap up to meet him.

"Now, now, darlings, don't fret. No one's been hurt so far, beyond some manhandling." Uncle Kunihiro comes in closer, only vaguely lit by the lamps in the distant street. Miki would never have thought he'd feel this happy to see him.

"What do we do?"

"Are we going home?"

"Don't be silly! This is just some low-level yakuza group who are overstepping their boundaries. All we gotta do is teach them a lesson!" Kunihiro tosses a flashlight at the wall, and Miki scrambles to catch it. It drops out of his hands instantly; it's his weighted flashlight, the baton one that the President had given to him. He nearly beans the boy in front of him with his fumble.

"If it's yakuza, we should—"

"Stay put. They're not supposed to be attacking us in the first place. I'm going to go remind them of that." Kunihiro sounds…uncharacteristically serious. Miki's never heard him like that. It's always lazy tones, sardonic laughter, cheerful wildness…

Kunihiro takes off his bomber jacket, fluffs it out a bit, and inverts it. Miki flicks on the flashlight, and an intense beam cuts straight through the forest. He winces and aims it horizontal to the camp. In the new light, he can see the inner part of the jacket is blood red, the saturation just barely off from the crimson of Kunihiro's hair.

He pulls it on, and turns to face the camp again. Miki swallows at the sight of a large circular emblem of a 6-pointed maple leaf over a mountain and a rising sun.

"Don't worry, kiddo. Have a little faith in your family, okay?"

Miki's uncle pushes his hair back, combing out all the twigs and leaves, and marches forward again.

 

* * *

 

A short while after hiding, Tsuna hears strange, muted  _pop pop pops,_  like gunfire but somehow dampened, and the sound of fighting decreases with each one. He risks a peek over the gutted washing machine he's tucked himself behind; the kids on the street are gone, and the people guarding them are all laying on the ground. Even as he watches, several more shots go off, and at least three people let out shouts of pain and crumple, nursing wounds.

Is somebody  _sniping_  them?

The ones fighting don't seem to care; Suzu, easily the weakest out of everyone remaining, is jumping on injured fighters and bashing them over the head. Hayato is getting a little more wild with his explosives, having them detonate just above their heads. Takeshi has, at some point, lost his baseball bat, and switched it out for a sheathed sword; Tsuna can see him try to shake the sheath off every few seconds. Ryouhei is laying waste to the rest.

And then, finally, Yamazaki walks casually past the tents, with his hair pushed back, wearing a different jacket. His voice carries so well even Tsuna can hear it, at this distance.

"THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, YOU FUCKIN' PEONS!" He roars, stepping between the fighters. He turns to look at Hayato, with his back to the enemy. "GOIN' AFTER KIDS, SHOULD I HAVE EXPECTED BETTER?"

The adults all talk to each other, a weird, distant murmur that Tsuna isn't sure is actually speech.

"Get the HELL away from my kids," Yamazaki speaks firmly more than yells, but it has twice the effect. They jolt, and fall over themselves in their attempt to flee.

Just like that, it's over.

"Well, time for cleanup!" Yamazaki says cheerfully, as if he didn't just scare off an entire yakuza raid into fleeing just by shouting really loud. He pats Ryouhei on the back. "You're ready to help, right, kiddo?"

Tsuna feels like he just missed something very, very important, just now, but he feels too relieved to care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Cultural notes-**  
>  _Ryoukan_ \- A type of traditional Japanese inn featuring baths, tatami-matted floors, and light yukata for the patrons to wear.


	14. The Willpower Of An Informant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly character-building and Underworld politics. The whole Miura vs. yakuza vs. mafia vs. Zeni + Fuck Off Yamazaki situation is super complicated, but hey, mass underworld politics was what it said on the tin.
> 
> (P.S., if you're still craving things to read and are into original stuff, please check out Ramblingstride's [Spectrum](keyandlocks.wordpress.com), it is basically my favourite? I want Ariadne Croixelle to kick my ass)

"Okay kids!" Yamazaki declares cheerfully with his hands held up. "Now that we cleared up that big, nasty misunderstanding, it's time for bed! I have arranged all your tents in a 'hamlet' formation, so that you may slaughter your enemies with more ease if it should ever become a problem."

The tents are organized in a loose ring, with all the entrances facing inward. Certainly a good formation for an ambush, Hayato has to admit.

"Now, remember, I want you to behave, and don't pick any fights just because those terrible men were mean to you! We need all hands on deck tomorrow, and you know, while I chased those guys out," his voice suddenly drops two octaves,  _ **"I can bring them right back."**_

The students quail. Kurokawa flinches and curls into her tent. Tsuna doesn't even blink. Hayato is having a really hard time understanding why Hibari — who's simply the Japanese version of a mafia school prefect — terrifies him beyond all reasoning, while Yamazaki — who's an adult that can drive away a hoard of raging yakuza with some loudly spoken chastisement — is just  _some guy_. Even the baseball freak looks unsettled. Hayato saw him laugh at one kid threatening him with a sword during the cleanup's 3-hour break time. He later  _used that very sword_  during the raid. Well, he was using the sword while it was  _sheathed_ , because he's a blithering idiot that nearly got himself killed trying to wiggle it out with one arm the entire time, but still.

Speaking of Yamazaki and raids.

Hayato wasn't present for half of Kurokawa's weapon pickup, but she  _is_  one person he knows for a fact brought a weapon, so when everyone is settled and ready to gossip their nerves away, he grabs her by the wrist and drags her away from the tents, to the street.

"What the hell!" She hisses.

"Truce," Hayato barks.

" _What?"_

Hayato checks that they're far enough from everyone who could overhear them and spins on his heel to jab a finger into her face. "Truce. I'll hold you to that you aren't messing with the Boss if you tell me what happened at the end of that raid."

Kurokawa shifts from side to side and folds her arms in the most obvious depiction of someone with something to hide that Hayato has ever seen. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, I'm sure a good samaritan just came by with a non-lethal sniper rifle for the heck of it, and you just  _happened_  to be the only kid that ran for the buildings." He didn't actually see that second part, but Kurokawa is prideful, and as a prideful person himself, Hayato knows that she'll latch onto any excuse she can manage.

Kurokawa tilts her head slightly. It's still dark, and he can't see a lot of her this far from the main source of light (the giant bonfire Yamazaki had decided to put in the middle of the tent hamlet, in lieu of a nightlight), but he can still see her blush.

"Well?"

"So, what, now you know I'm totally amazing and know how to use a sniper rifle even though I'm thirteen?" She throws her hair back imperiously, even though she hasn't bothered to actually hide her nervousness yet. Fucking amateur.

"No, dumbass, the mafia had a fourteen-year-old run one of the most powerful factions in the Underworld, you think I give a shit you know how to use a _gun_ ," Hayato sighs. Kurokawa mouths  _'mafia'_ incredulously. Can she keep up at all? Seriously. "You were up on the roof, sniping shit, so that means you saw everything, right?"

"Well, yeah, and it's not like I just ditched Tsuna or anything—"

"Hey. Truce. He was safer in the heap, you made yourself actually useful, which was more than I was expecting from you," Hayato dismisses. "What I want to know is; did you see Yamazaki?"

Kurokawa blinks. "Huh? Oh, yeah."

"Right. Now, did you see what was on Yamazaki's  _back_."

She frowns. "On his back…?"

"Didn't you notice? Guy marches out, and then he  _turns his back on the enemy_  when he yells at them. And then the yakuza just flip out, and go running. I mean, he barely yelled at them. I yell at people all the time and I don't get those results."

"…They ran because they saw the symbol on his back," Kurokawa realizes out loud.

"So you saw it?"

"Yeah, it was like…" She pats herself for something to depict the symbol with. Hayato provides a pen and pad of paper. She draws a circle, and her brow furrows as she clearly fails to recall what the symbol looked like.

"Just scribble it in," Hayato suggests.

She nods, and scribbles in a spiky blank space on the left side of the circle, and two stilted lines making up the right. Hayato can't make heads or tails of it. Kurokawa grunts and pulls out her flip phone.

"You keep a phone in your pajamas?"

"You keep  _dynamite_  in your pajamas," Kurokawa spits back. "I'm only doing this because you're at least semi-competent, not counting the screaming."

Hayato grits his teeth and forces himself not to scream at her. "Doing _what_."

"Obliging in your insane conspiracy theories. Plus, this one actually makes sense. Okayyy soooooo…" She presses a few buttons, humming tunelessly as she does so. Hayato taps his foot impatiently. Are all civilian girls this annoying? Are all  _civilians_  this annoying? He feels like he should threaten her into smartening up, but she's too confident in Sasagawa and Tsuna saving her, so she'd probably just yell at him.

Finally, she finishes her rapidfire button-pressing. "Mmmm…According to the Miyazawa BBS, the only yakuza around these parts are the Urayama group."

"According to the what?"

"BBS. You know, bulletin board chatting? People post stuff and other people reply? Aaaand…" She taps the 'down' button repeatedly. "A bunch of people were  _totally_  awake, kind of freaking out, especially with the explosions."

Hayato clears his throat and draws himself up, refusing to be cowed.

"Soooo the Urayama is a realty office, for like, summer homes or something? And…" More tapping. "They've been pretty distant with Miyazawa. Most citizens just ignore them. But like, they're being  _weird_  now, I guess. Chasing people off. Putting a bunch of garbage on the beach. Defacing hotels. Getting drunk and hassling tourists."

"What does that have to do with the symbol?" Hayato barks impatiently.

"Hey! I'm giving you backstory on the guys that attacked your whole flock! Pay attention!" Kurokawa snaps back. She flips her hair again and continues. "I'm getting replies at like, two in the morning, so at least your explosions are good for  _something_. Urayama is a part of the Akiyama-kai."

"Akiyama…that sounds familiar…" Hayato murmurs.

"Well it should, seeing as it's one of the most powerful yakuza families in Japan." She rolls her eyes, and Hayato's hackles rise. "They're like… _super_  big in Namimori. Or they were when my dad was a kid? Anyway, the Akiyama group is run by the Kouyou clan—"

"Akiyama isn't a surname?"

"No, it's referring to Namimori Mountain during autumn. It's a territory thing, a lot of families that came into power around the last century did that." She continues idly pressing buttons. "So there's also this branch family, Tsukioka, which isn't so much a wing of business as it is just…kinda there? Apparently they're just a family line of nepotism. Don't really bother with consistent surnames, Tsukioka is just a title. Have some common ancestors with the Kouyou, I guess? So they're just very distant relatives that get good positions sometimes, because, again, nepotism."

Hayato narrows his eyes suspiciously. "Where are you getting this?"

"The internet. So, anyway, the Akiyama symbol looks like this." She holds up her phone to show him a red circular crest featuring a Japanese maple leaf on the left side and a mountain — with two layers, hence the unsteady lines in her scribble — with a sun rising above it. He nods.

"They ditched because he's part of the main family. He's basically their boss."

"Yeah. So, they shouldn't be bothering us. SO, stop being so weird and angry all the time."

"He's a criminal!" Wait, no, Hayato is a criminal, shit. "He's a criminal and  _I didn_ _'t know about it_."

Kurokawa gives him a flat look. "…Can I go to bed now?"

"Ugh! You just don't get it!"  _Nobody gets it._  "This guy's got…connections. I mean, I actually  _did_  know he was a criminal, he knows… _stuff_. About  _things_. But I didn't know he was yakuza! This changes everything."

"It changes nothing! Everyone in Namimori is a goddamn yakuza! Yukari from class 3-A's brother is a yakuza! Our math teacher is a yakuza! Yamamoto's dad is  _probably_  a yakuza, everyone's a yakuza!"

"Wait, what was that last one—"

"Why are you digging so many conspiracy theories out of our lives! It's messed up! In Namimori, we're just…normal, alright? We're normal. Some of us do illegal things, but we have boundaries, we don't get into violent gang wars, we don't even threaten each other, because we're _normal people_. That's why Hibari is such a huge freak! You can't jump in and start threatening everybody! Especially as an outsider!" Hana flails angrily at Hayato. "We're not some investigation playground for you to roll around in, you shitty orangutan, we're trying to go about our normal lives! You can't just blame all your culture shock on nefarious plots!"

"I-I just—"

" _You pissed Tsuna off!"_

Hayato shrinks.

"Yeah! That's right! You pissed him off! You know how many times I've seen him pissed off? Zero.  _Never._  Because no one who has even the slightest modicum of self-awareness would be stupid enough to mess with Kyouko! And here you are! Messing with Kyouko! If he were the type to hold a grudge, or have feelings at all, you'd be dead! Because you're stupid, and you don't care about other people's feelings! You jackass!"

Hayato feels bristle going against guilt, jumbling up his thoughts. "I was just…something unnatural was definitely…"

"You said it to his face! To! His! Face!  _You dumbass!_ _"_  Hana smacks him over the arm. Hayato flinches before he can stop himself. "You called his closest friend a manipulative alien straight to his face! You know who does that? Someone who probably doesn't even give a shit about Tsuna in the first place!"

"— _How dare you—"_

" _Shut up!_ Don't talk over me!"

"—You're not—"

"I said  _shut it_!" Hana kicks him in the shins and shoves her hands onto his mouth. Hayato lets out a frustrated scream at being thwarted by a thirteen-year-old civilian girl. "Messing around with conspiracy theories, pissing Tsuna off and then running around bossing everyone about like nothing's wrong, you know what that looks like?"

" _MMGGHFF."_

"Like all you care about is yourself, and your theories, and your own business. I don't care if you're like, a felon or whatever, but if you can't even keep track of basic social boundaries, I'm going to go tell Onii-san to kick your ass and make you leave the country!"

Hayato finally manages to get her off him, and he shoves her away. "YOU shut up! You wouldn't understand the infinite bond between the Boss and I! Everything I do is for his sake!"

"Like insulting Kyouko? Picking a fight with all of his hot successful friends? If you're so threatened by high-spec people, why don't you look to your own high-spec status you dumb piece of shit!" Hana starts kicking him again.

"What the fuck is high-spec?"

"Gee, I dunno, like gorgeous, educated, charismatic, strong, assertive…And somehow, you're wasting all of it on leading an entire gang, because you're weird and awful. God, what is wrong with you. And you keep wearing that stupid hairstyle, what is  _wrong_ with you. And then you're just a  _total_ spazz, and you're always acting like a child, no wonder the best you can get is a bunch of delin—"

Hayato flushes. "I'M NOT TRYING TO BE A HOT SOCIALITE, I'M TRYING TO BE COMPETENT!"

"AND THAT'S WHY YOU'RE JUST A BUZZING LITTLE ANNOYANCE WHILE EVERYONE ELSE IS GETTING CLOSE TO HIM JUST FINE! STUUUUPID!"

"GO TO HELL!"

"EAT TURD, BANANA-BREATH!"

"Uh…what are you guys doing?"

Both of them whirl around to see Yamamoto Takeshi standing there with a confused smile splayed over his face. He's staring at them. To be specific, staring at Hayato holding Hana in a headlock, with her punching him repeatedly in the arm and trying to bite his fingers off.

"The hell are you doing here! This is a private conversation!" Hayato yells.

"Oh, uh. Tsuna told me to go tell you to cut it out. He said he's send Sasagawa, but he didn't want to 'reinforce dependence' or something?"

Hana squirms out of Hayato's grip and carefully preens herself, running her fingers through her hair and smoothing out her pajamas.

"We were just having a  _civil discussion_. Until he ruined it, of course."

"Ruined— you're the one insulting me left and right!"

"Just pointing out the obvious."

"Go to hell!" If he wasn't concerned about putting the students on red alert, his explosives would be out by now.

"Hey, hey, can't you just settle down and make a truce for now? I mean, everyone's a little stressed out," Yamamoto says lightly, making placating gestures. It disgusts Hayato on principle.

"I won't sit down and take an insult when I hear one!"

"I'm telling you you're being shitty to Tsuna! God, do you  _ever_  listen?"

"I don't have to hear this!" Hayato lets out a gurgle of rage and whirls around to march down the street. "I'm going to go on patrol!"

"Fine! Go then! Ignore your problems! ORANGUTAN!" Hana screams after him.

Hayato bows his head and hunches his shoulders, glaring furiously at the street ahead of him. He wants to light up a cigarette, but Tsuna is probably still watching for that. He wants to punch Hana, but he'll get shit from both Sasagawa and Tsu…

Hayato blinks. That's right. Tsuna would be upset if he attacked anyone who didn't have it coming. He's always calling to have the situation resolved, and he's only ever asked Hayato for his help once. Tsuna isn't like…like  _them,_  back in Italy, like those people who grew up with violence. He's only a civilian, and he doesn't understand how many situations could easily be resolved by a good tussle.

But he probably knows better ways to resolve situations too.

Tsuna isn't at all vibrant, and the anger burning in his eyes back then took Hayato off guard. Tsuna had cooled off just as quickly and still looked to Hayato to do his duties, so Hayato hadn't thought much of it, but maybe he should have. Maybe he had really, genuinely screwed up.

…But that's his own conclusion. Hana's petty insults have absolutely nothing to do with it. He figured that out by himself.

Finally deciding having a cigarette isn't worth the cold look of disappointment on Tsuna's face, he strolls down the street, peering around corners, flicking a lighter all the while.

 

* * *

 

"Son of a BITCH!"

Taniguchi bursts into the building, spitting mad and nursing an ache in his side and a bleeding wound over the head. He can't believe he got this fucked up by  _middle-schoolers_. Over half their population, wiped out, and then the rest washed out by a declaration of intent from the  _main fucking family_.

Most of the ones who can still walk right are carrying the injured. The sniper was using rubber bullets with pinpoint precision, hitting legs in every single instance. Barely any of them can even stand upright. One of them had their kneecap broken. Who the shit brings a sniper on a volunteer trip? Sure as shit not a school only here for volunteer work. Koyama is owned by the main family, the final shell of a collapsed branch group. They're definitely up to something.

Which means they gotta bail.

Taniguchi gives the head office door a quick rap before bursting in. "Boss! Listen, we're fucked, we gotta cut off Zeni."

Morita straightens in his seat. Of course he's here. He always works late. "What?"

"It's the  _main family_! That school?  _Koyama_ , and there's a main family member on watch for them. He just declared intent. They're gonna close down the branch if we keep this up. Doesn't matter how high we are, we're going to bite it. We gotta stop this."

"Shit…!" Morita grips a fistful of hair, staring at his computer monitor. They spend a few moments in silence, as Morita deliberates. That's a lot of money Zeni was offering, just for a little delinquency. It was the easiest job they've gotten in years.

Just then, another underling pushes past Taniguchi, waving a cell phone.

"Boss! I've been checking the net. Someone's digging into the family history. All of it."

"Fuck's sake…" Morita heaves a great sigh and pulls himself out of his seat, exhaustion written in his form.

"Boss…?"

"…I'm turning in for the night. We'll cancel the engagement with Zeni tomorrow."

What a waste.

Taniguchi nods to the underling, and they get on treating the wounded.

* * *

Takeshi has encountered a… _problem_.

He wasn't aware of the heat before, when he was groggy and half asleep and Tsuna was curled up in a ball just above his head staring at the tent entrance with the world raging on around them, but now that the only sound outside of their tent is easygoing chatter, the crash of waves, and birdsong, and there's no rush to get up, Takeshi has ample time to assess the problem.

The problem of Tsuna clinging onto his back like a limpet.

They had started out on the opposite sides of the tent, and that combined with Hana's warning of 'no touching' had let him to believe that Tsuna just hated physical contact of any kind. But she hadn't said that, had she? She said 'Kyouko and his mom'. And he was fine with grabbing Hayato, and Takeshi. A more accurate painting of his touching habits would probably be 'don't get in my personal bubble unless I know you or enter yours first'.

Sleeping patterns wouldn't really factor into that.

Takeshi has gone on a few trips with classmates and baseball teammates, so it's not like he's not familiar with clingers. It's just…clingers generally cling onto pillows. Not people. And Tsuna feels like the kind of person who would prefer to hug pillows.

Actually, speaking literally, Tsuna feels very bony and small. His knee is digging uncomfortably into Takeshi's inner thigh, and the grip on his shirt is getting dangerously close to choking him.

Thinking about it, there's more than one type of clinger. Takeshi doesn't know a lot about Tsuna, but he's slowly picking up little things about him as he goes, and he thinks that Tsuna absolutely wouldn't indulge in toys or comfort objects, as skittish as he is. He'd go for a pillow if that were the case. With Hana's statement, 'Kyouko or mom', Takeshi would have to guess that Tsuna spent years sleeping in his mom's bed and never broke the habit, and that's why this is happening right now.

Takeshi wonders if Tsuna has a body pillow. Should he get him a body pillow? Would he like that, or would he be upset?

He still has no idea what upsets Tsuna. It always seems like the most random things, and it's not like Takeshi can just do whatever and see what sticks, because he's…delicate. Not fragile, but like…squishy? Like, yeah, a limpet. All squishy and soft and tender on the inside, but with a hard shell of bitterness and surliness on the outside. It's not something you can really break through without ruining him. It's just… _how he is._  Takeshi likes that. It's like everyone around him is just a hermit crab, easily throwing around faces until they have one that fits just right, only to grow out of it and move on anyway, but Tsuna just formed an exoskeleton and cloistered himself inside like it was a fortress. The only ones allowed to know about the squishy bits are the ones he clings to.

Takeshi didn't make that metaphor up on his own. His dad said his mom was like that, except he called her a barnacle, which Takeshi thought was really rude when he was seven and still cutting his feet on barnacles when they went out to the beach, but sounds really tragically romantic in retrospect.

Man, he must have been lying like this for half an hour by now. Being perfectly still is hard.

He's just about to wake Tsuna up, when suddenly Tsuna clutches him tighter, adjusts his position so one of his legs is sprawled over him too (rescuing the oncoming bruise on Takeshi's thigh), and nuzzles deeply into the space between Takeshi's shoulderblades.

Takeshi experiences a fullbody shiver that lasts a whole minute.

…Well, at least this way, he can take a third option?

Takeshi shakes off the rest of his nerves, twists his body, and slowly turns himself upright. With slow, careful movements, he repositions Tsuna's hands around his neck, undoes the tent with his toes, and climbs out into the open air with a worryingly lightweight Tsuna clutching onto his back.

Tsuna nuzzles again, and Takeshi gags as the grip around his neck turns into a steel brace. Well, at least he's still got his strength?

Half the students seem to be up, circling the campfire in their little hamlet of tents and eating breakfast. Hayato looks like he's still hiding in his tent. Takeshi scans for the other members of their group; Ryouhei is teaching Miki stretching exercises, Hana is outside of the ring of tents crouched next to a barrel stove with, inexplicably, a large water cooler container, and Irie — Shouichi? Is it okay for Takeshi to switch to first name basis now? He's going to go ahead and say yes, so — Shouichi is watching Hana with a nervous distrust.

Takeshi goes over to the most interesting person available and checks on Hana, careful to move gradually so as to not jostle Tsuna's rib.

"Whatcha doing?"

"Cultivating the ultimate prank," Hana sings, her face in a pulled cat-smile. Shouichi just makes a face.

"Huh. Who for?"

"Tsuna!" She glances up, and her mouth quirks at the sight of Takeshi and the piggy-backing Tsuna. "I see you've uncovered his dark secret."

"His what now?"

"The ancient art of Tsuna Rearing, passed down from Nana-san to Kyouko, and Kyouko to me," Hana says with false poise. She gets up and musses Tsuna's hair. Tsuna's brow furrows, but he doesn't otherwise react. "If he's even a little bit drowsy, he'll cling to anything with a higher temperature. And he's got the physique of a starving street orphan, so that's basically everyone with a pulse that isn't suffering from hypothermia."

"Wow. Yeah, I figured." Takeshi has to balance on one leg and push Tsuna up by the bottom with his foot to get him back into position without jolting him. It's hard to keep Tsuna in place with only one arm. "So, what's the prank?"

"Nothing bad. I'm just going to get his nasty hair back to a respectable state. The prank comes from this part." She proudly holds up a container of blue-black hair dye.

"…Didn't his mom already suggest that?"

"That's why it's nothing bad! I'm just heating the water up now to get ready to lather him up. Gotta break down all those oils first!"

"And he's not going to wake up from that? Water usually gets me up in a flash."

"Ufufu…you're still an amateur." Hana tilts her head away dramatically with her arms folded. "You have so much to learn."

Takeshi, despite himself, suddenly feels desperately curious. He laughs a little. "Oh?"

"The second lesson in the ancient art of Tsuna Rearing!" She splays her hand theatrically at him, other hand on her hip. "As passed on from Nana-san, to Kyouko, to myself: Tsuna, in stressful situations, will sleep like the dead!"

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, apparently acting like a person takes a lot out of him. Whenever he freaks, he goes for proper shelter so he can nap. Usually like, karaoke boxes or cafes? He'll probably be unconscious until mid-afternoon, if we let him. As long as the washing is gentle, he'll be practically comatose."

"Haha! Sounds fun! What are you going to do about Hayato, then?"

"…Did he say you could use his first name?"

"Nah, but we're friends now, so it's okay."

Hana squints suspiciously at him, making her the first person in middle school to catch Takeshi's sass so far, and Takeshi internally decides to drop the honorific for her too, out of respect. She doesn't comment on it, though.

"Distracting Gokudera is what Irie-kun is for! He'll run interference!"

Shouichi looks ill. "D-Do I have to?"

"Sure do! Onii-san will be carrying Tsuna up, Oogawa-kun and I will be carrying supplies, and  _Ta-ke-shi-kun_  will be carrying this big tub of heated water."

Haha! She's sassing him back! Hana is cool.

"Can't some of your friends do it?"

"You can ask them to help, if you want to. But Uenohara-chan doesn't talk, and Watanabe-chan keeps to herself."

Shouichi clutches his stomach and makes a pained noise.

"Aaaand done," Hana says, emptying a boiling kettle into the big container. "Let's move."

Hana flags down Ryouhei, and Takeshi passes Tsuna over. The sudden coolness against his back is strange, and it's only at that moment he realizes Tsuna has drooled all over his shoulder. At Hana's advice, Ryouhei has Tsuna wrapped tightly around his front, with his hands woven under his bottom, so he doesn't have to worry about constantly adjusting him and there's more warmth to keep Tsuna obliviously clingy. Smart!

Hana leads the way with a bag full of the hair-washing equipment, with a confused Oogawa clutching a bowl and funnel right behind her. Takeshi has to struggle to keep the giant water jug upright with only one arm. Balancing on his shoulder only helps him so far, and his arm is sore pretty much immediately.

"Hurry! To the trail!" Hana cheerfully declares, pointing towards the woods, snickering like a kitsune spirit.

Takeshi remembers he used to be anxious about joining in with other people. Right now, he can't really imagine why.

 

* * *

 

Miura Fuyumi's studio apartment has always looked like Jim Henson's storage closet after a hurricane.

Fabrics draped over furniture in heaps, multiple sewing kits spread over the coffee table, puppets hanging from the walls that are already pasted with blueprints and boxed in by a small army of small animatronics, mostly of dinosaurs and insects. They're covered with discarded clothing, half-finished projects, and dishes that haven't quite made it to the sink yet. Cups of instant ramen and boxes of Chinese take-out coats the table, along with more stained blueprints with matching projects that haven't quite met the 'forgotten' stage just yet.

But there's other little quirks, like the magazines peeking out from her cupboards, or the glass cabinet filled to the brim with handguns, or the fact that there's a box of shotgun shells on top of her fridge, or the open dresser drawer in her bedroom that is filled with pistols.

She's never one to hold back in her hobbies.

Fuyumi herself is as sloppy and wild as her living space. Rather than wasting time styling her hair like she had yesterday, she pulls her dark, unbrushed locks in a quick, poorly-formed bun with a plain cloth scrunchie and shoves whatever clips she can find lying around on the floor or tables onto her fringe as she roughly shoves weaponry into her worn backpack. She opts against the sniper rifle. She'll already have one where she's going.

Her coke-bottle glasses slide down her nose slightly when she dips under her bed to reach a shoebox sitting behind a cluster of stuffed animals, a mere squadron amongst the veritable army that chokes up all the space in her bedroom. She flicks it open and admires the cool metal of the taser, with green rubber grips.

It was a gift from a friend after she got shot in the ass with her own gun. She's treasured it since.

Shoving it in the seat of her jeans, she yanks on her jacket, pulls the backpack on, and slips on her favourite white sneakers. She calculates how fast it'll take for the Akiyama-kai to realize she's up to something. Probably another two hours. Best to be quick.

Fuyumi rips the door and stands face-to-face with Kouyou Naoki.

His bright red hair is slightly windswept, like he ran here, but he's stock still and pale-faced. Probably holding his breath.

"Nao-chan!" Fuyumi beams.

"Going somewhere?" He says like his windpipe is being played like a flute. Man wouldn't even strain his voice under torture. Super creepy.

"Out," she replies vaguely.

"How far out would that be?"

"Oh, I dunno, just a little, like—"

"Like out of town?" Naoki raises his eyebrows, and pulls out a red folder with a small stamp of the Kouyou family seal in the top corner. Yikes. "You wouldn't happen to know where page fourteen and nineteen of this file would be, would you?"

"I'm sure you have a lot of folders, Nao-chan! Can't say if I do or don't!"

Fuyumi makes to push past him. He slams his hand against the doorframe to stop her.

"The file on Akiyama's general business organization. Page fourteen is on our operations in Miyazawa. Page nineteen is on the details of our underground trade line."

"Why do you even know that?" Fuyumi whines.

Naoki gives her a sharp look.

"I'm only trying to help?"

"You are explicitly forbidden from leaving Namimori, under pain of death," Naoki grinds out, "because we would rather have you dead than unleashed on the world. No outside movement. Even under observation. If it isn't our territory, you can't leave it."

"Miyazawa _is_  your territory?"

"The roads between it and Namimori are not. Father would be  _quite_  upset to hear you were allowed to set foot on a highway."

Fuyumi worries her lip. This isn't working very nicely. It's not like she can't trust the Kouyou family to manage their business, but on the other hand, her only contacts right now are two thirteen-year-olds, only one of which has tangible training. And not even with real guns. "Can I talk to you?"

"I feel ill at the thought."

"Don't sulk, I'm cooperating!" Fuyumi pokes him in the belly. His eyebrow twitches. "Even after I caught you that nice young boy…"

"Do you expect me to congratulate you for torturing a teenager and throwing him at us?"

"Haven't you ever heard of gaslighting? Amateur. You're never going to rule the family that way."

Naoki's eyebrow twitches again.

"Just tell me what you want in Miyazawa, and I'll send resources to take care of it. I won't have you running free meddling in _our_  business."

Fuyumi folds her arms. "Hmm…well, I guess you can call it a hunch. It has to do with the mass weapons confiscation."

"You know where the high school got them?"

"No, you'll probably get that Fukuzawa-kun to give that information up himself. Your dad likes taking in new meat, right?"

Brow twitch.

"Right. Sooooo~ what I was actually worried about was something I saw on the news. The whole gun thing pretty much solved itself. You probably picked up by now that the guns originated from inside the family, right? All the guns you sold are accounted for, which means they're from the family stash. Ahh, suuuch a good quality, nyoroho!"

Brow twitch, and a slight downtick of the mouth.

"But…I was soooo worried about my favourite bosses having internal trouble, I decided to look into it! And wouldn't you know it, it seems there's a whole bunch of holes in the lower levels of the family!"

"Enough with the games, Miura. Speak properly."

Fuyumi's mouth tugs. She hates dealing with Naoki. He knows her game face, so all casual, fun speech does is piss him off. With a put-upon sigh, she pulls her backpack off and takes out a few documents to show him. "Morita's dealing outsider business."

"We know that. It's allowed."

"Mafia business. No clearance with the Difo." She shows him the logs of mafia business in the past two months, as acquired by her informant. Miyazawa doesn't show up on a single one of them. "They're either skirting by on a technicality or dancing with a war between yakuza and mafia."

The Difo Famiglia is the only mafia family allowed to operate in Asia, and any and all mafia business has to go through them first. If someone is skipping that step, the whole situation is going to be all  _kinds_  of messed up.

Naoki shakes his head. "They know better. Technicality."

"Well that's nice! Anyway, they're probably just chasing away tourists. 'Cept…" She pulls out another file. "Akiyama only owns  _half_  of Miyazawa. The other half…"

"Oh  _fuck me,_ " Naoki cusses in English, somehow managing to maintain perfect poise while doing so.

"Mmm. So that's that. As for the guns, then, I did a little digging for business on the side, just in case. It turned out to be completely unrelated, but…" She shows him a map scribbled over with red crayon. "Seems supplying high-school kids wasn't the original goal of the guns getting moved. It was a technique to get them  _back_  into Namimori."

"What? Who the hell would be stupid enough to resolve an internal theft by giving them all to  _teenagers_?"

She raises her eyebrows.

Naoki snarls at the ceiling and pulls out his phone. He calls in the press of two buttons. Very practiced movement. He must do it a lot.

" _Kunihiro!_  Where the  _fuck_  are you? …..What do you  _mean_  you're in Miyazawa? You wretched— shut up. Listen, while you're there, talk to Morita, tell him to take out whoever he's been dealing with, he's made a life-ending mistake and father's going to collapse Urayama  _and his skull_  if he keeps on.  _Oh._  God. Yes. Of course you did…..Yes, of  _course_ you did."

Fuyumi hasn't spoken to the black sheep of the Kouyou family often, but based on all the phone calls she's heard meant for him, she's getting the feeling 'of course you did' are the words he likes to live by. The zany kind of predictable.

"Listen to— focus, for _fuck_ _'s sake_." Haha, hoo boy, Fuyumi's never seen him lose his cool like this. "The guns. I know you're the one who cycled them, you irresponsible little  _monster_. Where did you get them? If we have a leak— NO! don't take care of it! How many times have we told you to stop taking care of things! _You are ruining this family!_ "

Fuyumi stifles a giggle.

"What, don't— don't hang up on me! Kunihiro! Listen to me, I'm not fini— I can hear you crinkling candy wrappers! Kunihiro! KUNIHIRO!"

Naoki furiously ends the call and looks like he wants to chuck the phone at the wall.

"You didn't tell him about the split ownership."

Naoki takes a steeling breath, and lets it out with a basic framework of calm. "I told him enough. God knows what he'd do if he knew who owned the rest of the land. I'll send someone in. Thank you for the information."

Fuyumi frowns. "I could still—"

"No. This is Akiyama business, through and through."

"I'm the one who knows the mafia, if you'd just—"

"This conversation is over. If we see you leaving, we will have you shot. Goodbye."

Naoki turns on his heel and walks off in his usual dramatic flair. Fuyumi clicks her tongue with irritation. Yamazaki is a bit of a wild card, but she knows he's good at managing groups and circulating information. He's also embroiled in a love-hate situation with the rest of his family. There's no telling if Yamazaki has gotten everyone involved in the theft, or if he's sitting on a steadily unfolding conspiracy. There's also no telling how much he already knows.

Normally she'd leave it and let them eat themselves, but it's not just some internal squabble and bad business.

This is the  _ **Vongola.**_

This is the  _mafia_. Not the Difo, the  _Italian mafia._ There's no way those dumbasses in the Akiyama could tell the difference.

Miura doesn't have any contacts in this part of Japan, and while Hana knows  _enough_ , most of the finer details are all about the yakuza. Mafia would make her panic, and she wouldn't be able to instinctively follow the beats like she could if she were just dealing with Morita and his ilk.

She shuts the door and leans against it. Who could she possibly use to investigate? No one who knows the mafia professionally, no one completely dissociated from the Akiyama — and honestly, everyone in this town is associated with the Akiyama one way or another — but no one who has an actual friend in the Akiyama that could convince them to turn right around and leave…

That leaves someone local who has that same sort of instinctive ability to follow the rhythm of Underworld culture that Hana does. Shouichi knows the trade, but not the society, so not him. She doesn't know a thing about Yamamoto's son. Sawada's son is nice, but Sawada Iemitsu himself is embroiled in the Vongola doing… _something_ , she's not sure what his actual job is, so that's waaaaay too close.

She taps her fingers together rapidly. Yamamoto himself wouldn't dare make a move. She doesn't know any of the other people lingering around Namimori. She's not touching Yamazaki. She doesn't have any contacts in the Akiyama itself. Hibari could technically be flung in any direction with the slightest word, but only within Namimori itself.

God, she really should have paid more attention to Underworld politics and less attention on cool guns.

Fuyumi rubs her face and groans. Think, think, think, it doesn't have to be much, just someone who can fly under the radar, leave the town, and follow pace…

She stops.

And she lights up.

Fuyumi nearly knocks over four pieces of furniture and an animatronic bear with a banjo in her effort to race to the phone, and she dials the number she knows off by heart.

The phone only rings once.

" _Hello?"_

Bingo.

"Heeeey, Haru-chan, it's big sis! It's been soooo long! Y'know, I'm taking a break right now, so could you come over for a bit? I want to gossip with my cute little sister~"


	15. The Willpower of the Underfoot

Hayato finishes re-organizing the second day of garbage clean up just in time to realize that Tsuna has gone missing.

In fact, everyone's gone missing, barring the gun kid, who was barely relevant to begin with. Even Miki is gone. Hayato decides to immediately blame Kurokawa for this. He doesn't know how or why, but this is definitely her fault. She's a horrible, entitled meddler, and no one else would lead the whole group astray.

Anyway, Hayato slams Gun Kid into a tree and glares.

"Where are they?"

"I-I-I don't know what you mean! I'm innocent! Please!"

_Pathetic._

"I don't appreciate lying, so why don't you—"

"Now now, Hayato-kun!"

Hayato feels something grasp at his neck, and he goes stumbling backwards. The weight pulls him down, and he sees the casually calm face of Yamazaki. The twigs in his hair has been traded out for sand. He's smirking knowingly, as usual.

Yamazaki is an enigma wrapped in a farce of incompetence. He's the homeroom teacher for the entire first year and the social studies teacher, never assigns homework, and has to be bribed to do just about anything. Hayato's relatively certain he actually runs the school, seeing as the principal is a spineless piece of garbage and the Board Chairman is obscured in so much mystery Hayato suspects they just didn't bother giving Koyama one.

Apparently, Yamazaki basically just graduated high school and then immediately started teaching. Normally you'd need some sort of educational backbone to teach, let alone obtain a position as a homeroom teacher, but Koyama is so dirt poor and the student body is so small it probably didn't matter. Hayato has no choice to believe it anyway, because Yamazaki is only what, twenty-four?

As far as his credentials go, he's actually pretty typical for a mafia schoolteacher, and Hayato finds his classes to be decent enough for middle school level, if a little barebones. A lot of attention is paid to the yakuza's historical significance. Combined with the Mafia School Prefect Poster Child that is Hibari Kyouya, Hayato has actually been pleasantly surprised by Namimori's standards of education. Great place for Tsuna to grow up.

The problem is that Yamazaki is a fucking asshole and Hayato hates him.

"What do you want, bastard?"

"Haha, kids. Love 'em. Anyway, don't worry so much about your little friends. No one likes a helicopter parent. You're going to give the little one anxiety." Yamazaki hesitates with his gaze to the clouds. "…Taller one too. You give everyone anxiety. Admirable trait in a man. Emotional instability is so much easier to rule through than fear."

"You got your eyes on the Boss now too?" Hayato shoves an accusing finger in Yamazaki's face. "And don't think I haven't noticed you all over Oogawa."

"It's okay, Miki and I go waaaay back. I even squished his baby toes! We have a profound bond."

"I don't care! Stay the hell away from him!"

"When  _I_  was fourteen, I had to spend time with relatives  _I_  hated, I don't know why he gets to get out of it." Yamazaki steps backwards, dragging Hayato back with him.

"Let go of me! And I don't know about this relative shit, but you're planning something! Yakuza things!"

"Oh! Astute as always, my cute little Hayato-kun~" Yamazaki yanks Hayato's collar so he falls, and throws an arm over his shoulders. "You like Underworld stuff, right kiddo?"

"Stop treating me like a child!"

"Right! So, it's still early, and I have some follow-up business to do, and I'd really like to do it while your posse of infant delinquents aren't around. I hate to say this, but you're all more charismatic than I am, and they'd undoubtedly turn my cute little students against me while I'm out. And so will you! So you're coming with me!"

Hayato balks. "You're leaving them by themselves?"

"We can let the other girl watch them. The one named after the town. Uenohara, right? Since you were  _sooo~_ insistent."

Hayato scowls.

"Come now, Hayato-kun, they're not toddlers. They can be left alone for half an hour without you screaming at them." Yamazaki gives him a blatantly fake smile. Hayato wants to punch his teeth in.

Then Yamazaki looks up, and the smile drops, revealing the cold, analytical face of a true man of the Underworld. Hayato follows his gaze to two men in floral shirts. Hayato would call them tourists if they weren't staring directly at Yamazaki.

"They're with me," Yamazaki whispers to Hayato.

"Really? Because it looks a lot like you don't want them here."

"Oh, I don't, but they're still with me. I suppose you could call this babysitting. However…" His eyes skate over to an older man in an apron standing outside one of the stores. "That one's not mine."

"Are you telling me there's something more shitty than yakuza in-fighting going on here? How incompetently is your family run?" Hayato snorts.

"Oh, darling, you are a riot. Come along, consider this an educational lesson on Japanese Underworld etiquette. You'll probably need it, if you want to be a big bad mafia tutor worth his salt."

Yamazaki pushes Hayato into moving. Hayato grunts and grudgingly allows it, because while he hates Yamazaki and being pushed around, valuable intel is still valuable intel.

"…I'm not mafia."

"Oh, goody, you're a Blackmarket kid. That's useful. You work on contract?"

"Sure. I just do stuff to businesses, though," Hayato grumbles. The lie sits uncomfortable on his tongue.

"Pity. But interesting! Explains why you flourished so quickly in Koyama. I like the bombs especially. I'll have to keep you on call just in case we need anything blown up."

Hayato rankles at the idea of working for yakuza, but the bonus money sounds pretty appealing. He could feed it into Tsuna's education. Maybe buy him a gun. Yamazaki definitely plays things more fast and loose than the people Hayato is used to working for, definitely less pressure to deal with, and Yamazaki doesn't seem to be an especially violent person. He just gives a stiff nod.

They walk through the streets casually. When they pass the man in the apron, Yamazaki gives him an exaggerated wave. The man doesn't look happy. The two men following them wait at the corner, and Hayato watches over his shoulder as they quickly run up to the man and start talking to him in hushed voices.

"…Piss off someone you allied with?"

"Nah, but they're all antsy because no one knows what the hell is going on. Really delicate situation going on, and it's freaking the locals out. I'm just gonna tell 'em to cut it out, things'll go back to normal after that."

"Huh. Piss-poor management, I think."

"Haha! Easy for a kid to say."

They continue for a few blocks until they stop at a realtor's office. Yamazaki pushes the door open and spreads an arm open for Hayato to enter first. Hayato sneers, but proceeds inside anyway. Yamazaki waits a few moments before going inside himself.

The place seems to be a normal office space in the lobby area, but down the hall, Hayato can see expensive paintings and decorations. There's a sword hanging on the wall at the end. They're pretty obvious about their business. The receptionist is a normal-looking woman, and she regards the two of them with furrowed brows.

"Can I help you…?"

"Hi! I'm…" He looks down the hall for a moment, before continuing with "Kouyou Kunihiro."

Hayato bites out a horrified squeak.

The receptionist looks just as spooked. She abruptly stands, and stammers out a "I-I'll go get someone to see you right away."

Yamazaki watches impassively as she dashes down the hall at an impressive speed for someone wearing heels. Hayato stares up at him, wishing he had done some sort of background check to follow-up Kurokawa's research. Well, it's not like he could, considering he doesn't own a phone, but the fact he was surprised at all just pisses him off.

"…You're pretty on the ball, Hayato-kun," Yamazaki says after a moment. "Most people outside of the immediate area wouldn't ID the surname."

What the fuck. Kurokawa gave him delicate information without precautions? That reckless  _cow!_

"I have my resources," Hayato says. He hopes it sounds cool and calculating enough for it to take.

Yamazaki makes a distracted noise, and they stand there in relative silence for a minute, until the receptionist hurries back with an intimidating man that's all sharp angles. Now that's what Hayato calls yakuza. The man doesn't look spooked or angry, though, just tired in a distinctly worn-down sort of way.

"Heyo, Tanaguchi-kun! Where's your boss?" Yamazaki's voice is disgustingly saccharine.

"Breaking off the deal with the person we were working with. The only reason we took it was because we didn't have to get involved with anyone's business, and now we're making waves, so we're done. You happy?"

"Nope! I want to know everything. You didn't contact the main family, and the way I hear it, you guys could have done some craaaazy damage. So can we talk? Just so I know what went wrong in your dumbass plans."

The yakuza, Taniguchi, sniffs derisively, but nods and gestures his head towards the hall. They both advance, but Taniguchi stops them.

"You bringing the kids?"

"Yeah! Field-trip! They're learning."

Kids?

Hayato whirls around, and sure enough, right by the door stands that damn irrelevant gun kid. He looks like he's going to shit his pants.

"The hell are you doing here?" Hayato barks.

Irie shrieks and jumps back a little. "I-I-I was— He invited me in!"

"Invited you in? What, were you following us until now?"

"I wasn't sure if I was supposed to stay back or not," Irie whines.

Yamazaki laughs and starts walking again. Hayato glares at Irie, but Yamazaki already indicated him as part of the group, and this is Yamazaki's meeting, so there's nothing he can do. He whirls around and marches along, doing his best to ignore the copper-haired twerp. He's probably going to report back to Kurokawa, but Hayato has the advantage of already understanding how the Underworld works. His intel will be totally better than hers.

They enter an extravagantly furnished room with a rug that looks like it costs more than half a year of Hayato's current salary. Taniguchi gestures to the opulent leather couch, which the three sit on. Well, Hayato and Irie sit, Yamazaki lounges on it like he owns the place. (Though he technically does.) Taniguchi slides onto the couch opposite.

"So, what do you want to know?"

"So, what do you want to know?"

"Who's the deal with?"

"Italian collector. He wanted us to drop tourism and chase off any outsiders in Miyazawa for about a month while he looks for this thing he wants, god knows what."

"He mafia?"

"Fuck if I know. We didn't ask. Plausible deniability. Prolly is though."

"Mm. Where's this guy been looking?"

"Off our territory. Promised to operate off Akiyama-owned land as long as he's here. Only reason the boss agreed."

"Decent enough plan. Dad'll let it slide, since you broke it off so quick."

_Dad?_

"What's the guy's name?"

"Zeni."

The blood drains from Hayato's face. Yamazaki abruptly sits up. The tension in the room spikes, and Hayato finds it hard to breath.

"Romolo Zeni?"

Taniguchi shifts uncomfortably. "Yeah. That a problem?"

"No, just absurdly good luck you're splitting off. Good job on all of you. Whew." Yamazaki laughs, but it comes out stiff.

Hayato swallows the dryness in his throat. Sweat is creeping up on his palms.

"…Right, so, the Difo are kinda side-eying us right now, so can you tell 'em we're done with all that, or…?"

That's enough. Hayato jumps to his feet. "You've been making deals with a mafia boss  _without Difo approval?_  Are you a  _fucking idiot?_  Mafia aren't allowed to do business in Japan without running it by the Difo or an Authority! You could spark an international war if things go south! You think you could pass it by with some milktoast excuse like 'plausible deniability'? If the Difo don't kill your dumb asses, the Vindice will!"

"Well I sure as shit don't know any 'Zeni', so I think it works just fine, thanks," Taniguchi snarls.

"Fuck you! I could blow this place to the ground!"

Taniguchi surges to his feet. "You wanna try it, punk?"

"Okay, not to interrupt, but what counts as 'business'…?" Irie whispers.

Yamazaki tilts his head back to look behind Hayato. "Organized dealings between two Underworld groups. Blackmarket contract work doesn't count, which is why they thought they could fly it."

"Yakuza aren't Blackmarket, they're yakuza! It doesn't matter if you contracted, you dumbshit, it's still business!"

Taniguchi grabs him by the front of his shirt, and Hayato whips out a fistful of dynamite.

"You think you know a lot about the Underworld, kid?"

"Sure as shit do, you rotten sack of—"

Taniguchi grips Hayato by the shirt. "We're not doing shit!"

"You're not  _Blackmarket_ , you're a part of an organized crime group. There is  _literally_  no way you can sell this!"

"What do you know, you're Italian! And how old are you, twelve?"

" _Thirteen_ , which is old  _enough_. Superbi Squalo took over the Varia assassination squad when he was  _fourteen_ ," Hayato puts out, mostly on instinct. He's been given a lot of shit as a young kid trying to make it in Italy, and Superbi Squalo has been his excuse for years. He doesn't actually know much about the person himself, but he _has_  memorized a detailed roadmap of his political relevancy.

Yamazaki regards him lazily. "Didn't he die after literally one year in the seat?"

" _No_ , he gave the seat to another guy, and then became his right-hand man, and after that guy stepped down, he became the leader of the Varia again, and he's still the leader of the Varia! Right now! You don't need to kill the boss of the Varia to become the next boss, dumbass!"

"Why'd the last guy die then?"

Hayato rolls his eyes. "Tyr was the last sword emperor, and Superbi Squalo is a swordsman, so he had to defeat him in battle to become the sword emperor. And he did, so he's the sword emperor now, and he's undefeated even though killing Tyr would have made every swordsman worth his salt flip out, which means he's got the skill to back it up. He's the best of the best. And he did that at  _fourteen_."

Taniguchi squints at Hayato. "Why the hell does he know so much about a mafia hitsquad?"

"He's Italian," says Yamazaki, like that means anything.

Taniguchi looks interested. "How much  _do_  you know about the mafia, actually?"

"I'm a hitman," Hayato says quickly, and draws himself up. "They call me Smokin' Bomb Hayato. I do work for all sorts of mafia cover companies."

Taniguchi drops back down on the couch and folds his arms. "You any good?"

"Any— we chased you off last night, didn't we? And—" Hayato smirks at the bomb he's about to drop, and focuses in preparation for his reaction "—The head of the CEDEF himself hired me to do a job!"

Taniguchi looks shocked.  _Ha!_  That'll teach him to underestimate his peers. Only thirteen his  _ass._

He turns to look behind him, hoping to see more impressed faces, and feels a spark of uneasiness when his eyes land on Yamazaki. His face has completely cooled off, just like when he was looking at that aproned man on the street. He looks a particular shade of unhappy, like he found a new obstacle that needs to be taken apart piece by piece until it's reduced to nothing. People usually make that face at Hayato just before they try and kill him.

Then, as if it were never there, the look is replaced with a brilliantly lazy grin.

"You know what, don't worry about it. The main family will make this all go away. Morita will be punished, but I think no one has to  _die_. Just give us some time, okay? Thanks for not hiding this from us."

"Not a problem. You take care, and if you need anything, we got your back. If this Zeni guy tries to tussle with you…"

"That won't be a problem, because if Zeni tried to tussle with us, everyone would be dead!" Yamazaki grabs Hayato and Irie by the collars and hoists them up. "Glad we cleared the situation up before it blew up in our faces. I like the caution you put into it. Good work."

"Sorry for the trouble, Kouyou-san," Taniguchi says, and bows deeply.

"Don't worry about it! If there's one thing my family taught me, it was how to manage our underlings."

Yamazaki shoves them both out of the room, and walks with a gliding, magnetic pull that Hayato instinctively falls into. His heart is hammering. The situation is more complicated than he thought. And seriously, Zeni? Romolo Zeni? What is Zeni even  _doing_  here?

They leave the building, and stop at the street. Yamazaki looks around. Hayato does too, and notes that there's more people out lately. It seems that the news the Urayama is going to cut out the delinquency shit is getting around.

Yamazaki twirls on his heel to look at Hayato. Even though he's not being looked at, Irie jumps about a foot in the air.

"…Hayato-kun."

"Yeah? What."

"I find it so! Interesting! That the head of the CEDEF would give you a job? What'd he want you to do?"

Hayato freezes. He opens his mouth.

"Don't answer that, you're being obvious enough as it is. The little one, Tsunayoshi-kun, right? Why's he so important to the CEDEF?"

Dread seeps into Hayato's core. He tries to shoot a rebuttal, but all that comes out is a thin squeaking noise.

"Rhetorical question. Head of the CEDEF is Sawada Iemitsu, Akiyama's cooperated with him every now and again. Keeping his wife and kid safe and cozy was a thing somewhere in there. We love the Sawadas! 'Cept, I don't understand why you'd be here. Hiring a hitman to babysit, little weird isn't it? And tutoring him—"

"—It was because, because he's got potential as a boss, so I decided to," Hayato manages to regurgitate. "He was— Sawada was just worried about him, and I was…I fit a type, so I'm just. Watching him. But he's got potential to be so much more."

"Haha! That's stupid and reckless, I love it. Irie! You aren't hiding and nefarious secrets, are you?" Yamazaki points at Irie, who screams and shrinks a little.

"N-no! I only do weapons because I wanted my internet friend to like me! I only sell to her! I'm not a suspicious person!"

Yamazaki snaps his fingers. "Damn, boring after all. Oh well. Anyway, Hayato-kun, you have the CEDEF's number, right?"

"…For emergencies," he says thinly. Alarm bells are going off in his head.

"Great! This is an emergency. Now, you're a smart cookie. Did you ever, through that discussion, wonder something like 'why is Romolo Zeni here'?"

Hayato nods. His fingers itch.

"Well, half the land doesn't belong to our family! You know Akiyama is a big deal, right?"

He nods again.

"But we are small, small potatoes in comparison to who owns a big fat third of Miyazawa. Listen, kiddo. Zeni, he likes the kind of expensive occult shit only other Underworld groups can get their hands on. And wouldn't you know it, the other half is owned by a family in the Underworld! A mafia family!"

Hayato lets out a shaky breath. No wonder the Difo were getting antsy.

"I bet they thought they were being cute, helping some collector on the side! But, you know, it's a little bit worse than that! I like sticking my nose where it doesn't belong, and I found out something super neat!" Yamazaki slings an arm over Hayato's shoulder yet again.

"O-Oh…?"

"Yeah. The folks who own that bit of Miyazawa over yonder? The folks who Zeni is stealing from? It's the  _Vongola_."

Hayato isn't sure if he's ever been more scared in all his life.

"It's  _ **WHAT?**_ _"_

"So, you know, Zeni, big family like that. Zeni family is pretty big, not sure if you knew that part.  _Veritably huge._  They might start a war right here! And Akiyama would  _hate~_  that! We like our land, and our people not being dead. You know how much non-lethal weaponry we equip our men with? Lots! We hate dead people! We need to do more than just make the Difo calm down. We need to make the  _Vongola_  calm down. Make them chill out a little. Make them think 'golly, those Akiyama are really the upstanding sort'!"

Hayato's breathing is too quick, unstable. It sounds muted underneath the crushing sound of the universe collapsing around him. "W-What are you…what do you…"

"So here's the thing. CEDEF, advisers to the Vongola. You know what would look good there? Say, you and the leader's son being kidnapped, and the Akiyama valiantly rescuing you!"

Hayato takes a stumble back. "N-No! You think I'm dumb enough to put the Boss in danger like that?!"

"Oh, sorry. Guess I wasn't being clear enough."

Yamazaki takes out a gun, and aims it at Hayato's head.

"This is a non-lethal, but it's a Vanatis B-40. Irie-kun, tell him about what happens if a Vanatis B-40 hits someone in the head at point blank range?"

Irie is wheezing. "Th-The…The strength of the…m-major head trauma…That would kill him…!"

"Righty-O! Vongola can't get too mad at me for that, killing some half-pint hitman  _by accident_. So, y'know. You, leader's son, kidnapped. Good idea, right Hayato-kun?"

Hayato wants to scream, wants to throw all his dynamite at once, wants to tear him to pieces.

He doesn't even have a cigarette lit.

Yamazaki tilts his head with a tight little smile. "…Right!"

 

* * *

 

"Uuuuooooo! What is that!"

"Ssshh shhh! You're going to wake Tsuna up!"

"Oh! Sorry Kurokawa!"

The group stands over a great ravine, peering over the edge in wonder. After somehow managing to pull off the greatest prank ever, Hana got bored and decided to check out the tourist spots she heard about. The entire town is one huge tourist trap, but there's some particularly cool bits here and there.

Specifically, the Valley of Churches.

Past the twisty-turny paths of the hiking trail, right underneath the small mountain Miyazawa rests against, is a cliff leading to a sudden drop that plunges straight into the ocean. It's surrounded by trees, and you can't even see the shore; it's just a bowl of collapsed buildings connecting the river that cuts through the mountain to the bay.

"Impressive, isn't it," Hana grins. She runs up to the wooden pole fence and clambers up one of the posts to gesture to the massive stone ruin. "This is the Valley of Churches! Over a century and a half ago, many foreigners followed the steadily moving trade lines into Asia. While most of them settled down in China, some went as far as Japan. It's said that Japan's current economic climate and ties with Europe are due to that movement! And back then, while some tried to adapt, others tried to recreate their home the best they could. This valley is the remnants of a small Italian community who tried to use bricks and reinforced stones to build their houses! But little did they know, they were building on soft clay, so when the rains hit, the whole thing collapsed! They say the church was the first to set off the slide."

Hana gestures wildly as she tells her story. Takeshi and Ryouhei lean in, clearly interested, while Oogawa is leaning so far over the fence he looks like he's going to fall off. Tsuna is chewing on Ryouhei's shirt.

Incredibly, while it became a billion times softer and feels like kitten down now, Tsuna's hair is genuinely that huge; even when wet, rather than clinging to his scalp like a normal person's hair, it became a massive, dense clump that started drying about three minutes after they were done. Right now, it's just regular spikiness, except pushed back. Hana isn't entirely sure Tsuna is even human. No one has straight hair that can do that.  _It_ _'s impossible._

"So what happened to everyone who lived there?" Takeshi asks.

Hana shrugs. "Just moved up higher, and built on denser grounds. The mountain has a few stone buildings, but most of it is wood."

"You really did your research!"

"Uhm, duh? There's no way I'd go vacationing somewhere without knowing all the best spots to look at. Anyway, I'm gonna go take some pics!" Hana jumps down from the post and starts carefully picking her way down the slanted, craggy cliff face.

"U-Uhm, isn't that, er, illegal…?" Oogawa says softly.

"People in Namimori follow  _rules_ , not laws. C'mon." Hana hops down a few metres, and dances along the rocks until she skids down to the first of the stone buildings. It's hard to tell, but Hana can sort of see the remnants of what must have originally been the walls that covered the rocks. She takes her phone out and takes a picture of it.

"Wait for me!" Takeshi cheers. He springs down, agile despite the whole broken arm thing.

Ryouhei is more careful, but uses one arm too; the other is dedicated to keeping Tsuna cradled into his side.

Oogawa is left alone at the top, peering uncertainly down at them. Hana waves insistently at him. He chews on his lip, looks behind him just in case anyone is around, and hops the fence too. Hana and Takeshi cheer, and immediately get to crawling all over everything.

The basin is large, but the ruins are humongous, embedded in the ground all the way up to even the mountainside. The basin itself is full of water, submerging half the old buildings. Hana peers into the green water, and gasps as she sees fish dart around in the gloomy depths of the pool. She slides down a stone slab to land on a jutting piece of broken wall right above the water, and looks around her. Moss-coated stone surrounds her, grown thick and yellow-green from the dampness of the air and massive amount of trees around them. She feels like she's in some ancient kingdom, crumbling into the earth. She's not sure her phone will have room for all these pictures.

"Where's the church?" Takeshi asks from way up on top of a giant, crumbling tower. She has no idea how he even got up there with one arm.

"Towards the middle," Hana calls back.

Takeshi scans the area. After a few seconds, he seems to spot something, and skids down on his heel. He dances over the rocks and stops at a large gap that's invisible unless you're standing right in front of it; it seems intentionally built, but sloppily so.

"It's right there," Takeshi gestures, pointing in the water. Hana skips over to his side and leans over to look. Sure enough, a church is at the deepest point of the basin. Neat. She takes a picture.

"So what's with the opening?"

"Dunno. You think it leads somewhere?" Takeshi doesn't bother for her answer; he just charges right in, grinning all the while. Hana rolls her eyes.

Oogawa is currently clinging to Ryouhei's back, following him carefully as they wander around the lip of the basin, too wary to actually risk going over the water (though Ryouhei looks like he's considering putting Tsuna down and charging in full throttle). Hana gives them a small wave and runs her fingers over the water. It's delightfully chilly.

"Luckily, I came prepared," she declares. Hana bounces back to the other side of the pool, yanks off her denim dress and her shorts, and tosses her phone onto the pile. As a final touch, she takes the watergun, as a precaution. She spreads her arms out wide, showing off her incredibly cute and stylish black bathing suit.

That's the final straw for Ryouhei. The temptation of physical activity of any kind is too great. He puts Tsuna down with excessive care and practically rips off his clothes, revealing surprisingly well-fitted boxer briefs. With no further prompting, he jumps into the water.

Hana rolls her eyes again and ties her hair into a ponytail with an elastic from her dress pocket.  _Boys_.

The water hasn't been warmed by the sun yet, so it takes some getting used to. It's clear though, and looks clean enough. She holsters her gun in the back loop of the swimsuit and slips into the water feet first. The bite is enough to make her wince. After a minute or two, while watching Ryouhei splash around like a dolphin, she moves her body in more, a little faster this time, and plunges in when she gets to her stomach.

It's cold, and Hana instantly emerges to let a long, complaining groan about it. She wipes the water from her eyes with one hand and squints across the expanse of stone and water at Oogawa, who is curled up in a ball next to Tsuna with his chin buried behind his knees.

Hana looks around, and decides since she didn't bring goggles to make diving in worthwhile, she might as well follow Takeshi. She climbs back up and crawls into the tall slot in the ground. She was right about it being intentional; the whole place is a lopsided array of stones holding up a complete tunnel. She can't tell how old it is, though. Maybe it was here before the collapse and got all twisted up when everything slid down?

The hall goes dark around the corner. She can't see anything in the blackness.

"Takeshi? Are you seriously exploring by touch?"

Takeshi grunts somewhere in the depths of the abyss. "Urgh…yeah! It's kinda fun. Just keep your hand on the wall."

"Is there any water?"

"Not so far. I think I found a beer can though."

"Eeeewww."

"You wanna grab a light?"

"'Kay. Don't move, you're gonna fall and crack your head open or something."

Hana quickly tip-toes out of the cavern and back to her clothes. She retrieves her phone, and turns to give Oogawa a passing glance. He's looking behind him, into the trees.

"You okay?" Hana calls out.

Oogawa snaps his head back and nods quickly, hands waving. She shrugs and goes back to see what Takeshi is up to.

With the light of her phone, she can see that the deeper part of the cavern is flat surfaces instead of rough stone, seeming to be part of the same building the giant slabs outside were made out of. It seems a lot more important and huge than the church. She turns the light around until she sees Takeshi. Or Takeshi's butt, at least. He's leaning in a doorway to check inside.

"You can't see, dumbass."

"Bring the light over then."

Hana huffs and comes closer to illuminate the contents of the room. There's a few remnants of other people hiding out in here; forgotten clothing, beer cans, food rappers. She winces and passes the phone to Takeshi so she can clean it up.

"Popular party spot?" Takeshi suggests.

"Harder to bust, I guess."

Since she doesn't have a bag to toss the stuff in, she just shoves all the crap into a corner out of sight. The room is bare except for the charred remains of a fire in the centre. She can see stains on the stone floor from…something. Probably furniture?

"What do you think the building's for?"

"Dunno. Let's keep looking!"

Hana hustles back to Takeshi's side and takes her phone back. Takeshi leads the way anyway, like a fool.

A series of loud, wet slaps come from the direction of the entrance.

"OI! YOU TWO OKAY IN THERE?" Ryouhei's voice echoes through the hall.

"It's okay, we got a light!" Hana calls back. "Watch Tsuna, if you lose track of him Gokudera's going to lose his mind!"

"GOT IT!" Ryouhei yells, and she can hear the slap of his feet as he dashes back outside.

Hana and Takeshi keep moving. She's using the display right now, to save battery power, but she might need to switch to the flash soon; she can barely see Takeshi's back a metre ahead. She hurries to walk side-by-side, but Takeshi is just so _huge_. He's inhumanly big. He's skirting pretty close to 180 centimetres. It's  _so_  unfair.

The halls wind around, and they peek in more empty rooms. Some of them have rotten wooden furniture, some of them have remnants of what looks like lecture halls.

"School?" Hana suggests.

"Pretty grim place to learn. And where's the lights?"

True. It seems like a place that  _should_  have lights; there's more and more carvings on the flat walls, forming intricate patterns as they advance deeper inside. The place is weird. Occult-y. Hana feels uncomfortable and exposed the deeper they go, and she itches to take out the gun. She can hear rushing water…somewhere.

Finally, the winding halls stop at a cave-in, leading into a pitch-black basin of water. She swallows and shivers. There's something foreboding about it.

"Want to take a swim?" Takeshi laughs.

"Not on your life. You couldn't find a more suspicious pool of water if you tried."

"Hey, at least it's not blood." Takeshi kneels down, and Hana does the same. She holds the phone up to the water and switches to the flash, and the illumination explodes through the room in comparison to the previous dim glow. It cuts through the water, revealing it to be mostly the same as the water outside; kind of greenish, and fairly clear.

And there's something shiny down there.

Hana makes a noise of discontent. She reaaally doesn't want to go down there, but…her curiosity is out of control. What if it's some priceless treasure forgotten in the depths of a collapsed tunnel no one cared to look through?

It's not even a deep pool of water. She could just grab whatever that thing is with her toes.

"Ugh. Fine. Hold this," Hana snaps, shoving the phone in Takeshi's hands. He takes it and aims it at the water again. Hana takes a deep breath, sits on her bottom, and pushes her legs in the water.

The cold is sudden, violent, and alarming. Water that's never been warmed by the sun shocks her, and she lets out a long, drawn-out squeal at the sensation, even though her legs were already cool to begin with. She doesn't waste time adjusting, though, and scootches forward until her bum is sitting on the very edge of the hole, so her legs can reach the bottom. Her feet scrapes against the stones as she pushes the debris out of the way.

"You okay?" Takeshi whispers.

"F-F-Fine!" Hana lifts her bottom and stands on her hands in one last lurch to get at the smooth surface tickling her toes. Her feet grasp it, but it doesn't come loose for the first few tries. She keeps thinking something is going to come out of the water and grab her leg.

Finally, Hana gets the object between the arches of her feet, and she does a backwards somersault out of the water. She grunts, slips, and collapses on her belly.

Takeshi chuckles. "Nice moves."

"Shut up."

She pulls herself to her knees and hobbles over to check what she fished out of there. It's…

A stained silver dish with a huge Roman 'I' on it.

"Think I could sell it?" Hana sighs.

"Eh. The local museum would probably like it better."

"Probably."

She turns it. The other side has six little crest things all around the rim, but most of them are too distorted or battered to make out. Not exactly an exciting haul, but at least not a disappointing one. She did, in fact, find an old relic.

"Anything else in there?"

The phone is held up to the water, but it's too cloudy to see anything now.

"Guess not."

Hana steps back and spins the plate in her hands. She looks around. She feels like there should be something more around here. Maybe behind the collapsed walls, but there's no way they could dig in there properly.

"Not nearly enough doors in here, you know," Takeshi notes. "If I had a secret underground base, I'd still use doors."

"Huh." He's right. There's no hinges on any of the openings. "True."

"The rooms are really bare, too, I thought there'd be more in here. They must have taken it all out a long time ago. You think any of it's in the museum?"

"We'll have to take a look later."

"H-Hey, we're here as volunteers, remember?"

"Eh. Didn't we just invite ourselves over at Kyouko's say-so? The only one who really has to worry about that is Oogawa."

"You're pretty loose with your motives…"

Hana takes a second look at the rooms with the more powerful light. Now that she can illuminate entire rooms with just a quick scan from the doorway, she can see more, like the cracks around the corners, the puddles, the bits where the floor has sunken into the clay earth, the door…

"Hold on!" Hana dashes across the cool stone and nearly slams into the wall, where the markings are carved into an obvious imprint of a door. She rakes her nails over the edges, and sure enough, there seems to be an even deeper indent where the lines of the door should be. "A secret entrance!"

Takeshi wanders over to check. "Huh. Don't think we can open it, though."

"Sshh. Don't ruin this for me. Ooohhh, it's sooo close!" She shoves the plate in the cracks and tries to pry it open that way. Takeshi laughs at her efforts.

"We should probably head back, can you imagine what Tsuna would do if he woke up an—"

**KRA-THOOM.**

The entire structure jerks, knocking the two of them off their feet, and dust cascades from the roof. Hana can hear heavy pieces of the building shattering all around her, falling into water, clay, itself. She's expecting to be crushed in a cave-in, but the roof of the room doesn't crack, and then her next thought is that the rest of the building is going to cave in and the two of them are going to be trapped inside and slowly starve to death.

She squeezes her eyes shut and rolls until her back is pressed to the wall. She curls up with her hands over her head, and she waits until the rumbling stops and she can't hear falling rocks anymore.

Silence.

"Woah."

Slowly, Hana uncovers her head, and peeks out to see the extent of the damage. While she can't see anything blocking their path or about to fall on her, she does see everything else.

The entire room is glowing.

The intricate lines carved into the walls and ceiling are all lit up like lanterns, radiating a gentle blue glow, with the occasional ripple of white, like waves through water. It lights up everything, and Hana can see with the kind of detail even the phone's beam couldn't pull off. Her eyes actually have to adjust.

"What is this…" Hana murmurs.

"I guess that impact dislodged some sort of switch," Takeshi chuckles, but it sounds weak and thin.

"That…oh my god! We have to see if the others are okay!"

Hana crawls back to her knees. She feels disoriented, and her limbs are about as firm as jello. What was that impact? That was  _definitely_  not an earthquake. If something in the valley had collapsed…

Takeshi leans against the door in an attempt to get back on his feet properly.

The door completely falls away at his touch.

Takeshi yelps as the slab of sheer rock eases back, and slides easily into the ground. Hana listens to the unnatural grinding in a sort of shock. They both stare uneasily, and even more light pours in through the room beyond.

It's a circular room, filled with those same blue lines, and some sort of dark stone in the middle that seems to almost...vibrate with the power of that light.

And in that room is a man in a dress shirt, pointing a gun at them.

"Who the hell are you?"

 

* * *

 

When Ryouhei leaves the tunnel, there is another person waiting for him.

He's tall and dark-haired and he has a goatee. Ryouhei can't see how built he is under the loose suit and overcoat he's wearing, but he looks foreign. He's looking at Sawada, which Ryouhei doesn't immediately find concerning, because lots of people tend to stare at Sawada when they first catch sight of him.

The problem is that Oogawa is shrinking away, and the dark-haired foreigner doesn't sound happy.

"Hey," Ryouhei shouts to distract him. They both look to him. "What do you want?"

"What are you kids doing down here? This is private property," the man retorts.

"Uh," true, "I'll…we'll leave, then! It was an extreme oversight!"

"No, no. Bad kids gotta respect the law." He looks up the hill they had climbed down to get here, and then to the opening to the ruin behind Ryouhei. "Say. You wouldn't happen to be those volunteer brats, would you?"

"We…are volunteers." Ryouhei starts approaching the guy, just in case this comes to blows, and secretly hoping this might come to blows.

"How many of you are in here?" The man makes a show of looking at the ruin now.

Ryouhei fixes his jaw. "…It's just us!"

"Fine." The man holds a finger to his ear, where there's a little black earbud thing, though Ryouhei can't see a wire. "Chrome, it's Marcello. where's the crew? …What do you mean  _you can_ _'t tell_ , for- okay, fine."

"Are you a tourist?" Ryouhei asks loudly, hoping to get his attention. Foreigners in resort towns tend to be tourists, right?

'Marcello' ignores him. "Nazario? You're headed to the Valley of Churches, right? Can you check up after I leave? Thanks."

There's two more men in suits that don't fit very well. Ryouhei picks up speed, fists raised, when he sees them headed towards Oogawa and Sawada.

"Hey! I said we'd go! Leave them alone!"

"Zero management skills, these locals," Marcello mutters, and then his hands ripple with a bloom of red, and a clawed hand slams into the side of Ryouhei's skull.

 

* * *

 

_The city is big and oozing and Tsuna is small and colourless._

_There is an old man. He is tall and jittery. He ruffles Tsuna's hair because he has to go._

_He walks down the sidewalk and Tsuna hobbles after him but the sidewalk is thick and then it's water and then he drowns in it and has to start back at the beginning sitting at the cafe table._

_He runs, tries again. Drowns in sidewalk. Runs, tries again. Drowns in sidewalk. The old man is getting too far away. Is he old? His hair is blond and that's his dad, actually, so it's even more important that he gets there._

_Tsuna gets up again and ignores the feeling of vertigo. He tries to run but there's a hand on his shoulder._

_Tsuna turns. There's a boy. He's wearing the Namimori West High uniform. It's brown and brown with a bright red tie that seems to burn, just like his hair._

_He says he's a friend! He says he wants to hang out. Tsuna says okay._

_They wade through the melting city and climb from vine to vine until they go to the plaza, and he says which one's your mom, Tsuna, even though Tsuna never told him his name, and he points and says that one._

_Tsuna's mom sees them and pats the boy with the red hair and Tsuna squeals and punches him because his mama is only allowed to do that to him. His mama scoops him up and says sorry._

_The boy says his mama should come home and Tsuna is mad because she doesn't have to. She lives with Tsuna._

_She says they're all probably still fighting and so it's okay, she'd rather not, and she pats his head again. The boy touches his hair where she ruffled it and looks kind of upset._

_"Hey."_

_The blankets under his fists are soft in some undefined, unpleasant way._

_"Come take a look at this."_

_It's a man in a suit and red hair like fire in a sunset and he's looking right at him._

 

* * *

 

_**KRA-KOOM.** _

Tsuna screams and jumps awake, and then jumps again as the bruising and broken rib complains against the treatment. He eases himself against the tree behind him, clutching at the dull throb of his chest. What…?

He's in some sort of ruin, half-submerged in water, walled in by a cliff face and a clay runoff from the mountain. Tsuna swallows thickly and inches backwards. The entire water's surface is whitecapping with waves and ripples. Some of it is localized to a single spot. Did one of the buildings fall in, or—?

A person pops out of the water. Tsuna freezes.

There, a man with a goatee and dark hair, and around his shoulders is…

Is Ryouhei.

He looks unconscious. His head is smeared red. He isn't wearing a shirt.

He doesn't understand how he got here. Was he kidnapped? Does it have to do with the people who attacked the camp last night? Tsuna wheezes, tries to crawl behind the tree, but his chest hurts so much, it hurts, and…

A huge, weathered hand wraps around his arm.

"Got the other one."

Tsuna looks in the face of a man who is very obviously not Japanese, and he registers a faint white haze in the sky right before the chloroform-soaked rag meets his face.

 

* * *

 

Miki tastes leaf mulch and dirt.

"No wonder they don't want tourists messing around here. S'like nobody's ever heard of rules."

His Japanese is a sloppy yet somewhat fluent dialect, a muddled mix between the high lilt of Italian and the soft Japanese consonants. Miki's heard it before. Gokudera's accent is similar, when he loses his cool, which is all the time.

A hand yanks him by the back of his shirt and lifts him up. His sunglasses slide off his face and bounce off the ground.

"You one of the kids who were beatin' on those yakuza?"

Miki's head is spinning. Adrenalin is pumping through is veins. He needs to find his boss, the president, and tell him...tell him…

He looks the man in the eyes. They're quite blue.

_**"Please let me go."** _

The grip on Miki's shirt slackens, and Miki drops back down to the ground and skitters out of arm's reach.

The man looks at him with an aimlessly distracted glaze. "Tsk...Doesn't matter. Like you could cause any trouble anyway. Get out of here."

Miki stares the man down. He kneels to grab his shades, but doesn't dare put them on. He waits for any sudden movement, but the man has already lost interest.

Miki immediately sprints off into the woods.

he has to be seeing things.

This can't be real.

He can't have…

He can't have just seen Sasagawa getting slammed into a sheer rockface hard enough to reduce his bones to dust.

He needs to find the president.

_He has to find his uncle._

 

* * *

 

Paper crinkles under small hands.

The only sound in the room is of a pencil scribbling chickenscratch Hangul against papers held against the smooth surface of the floorboards.

The lantern flickers unsteadily in the corner, casting long, menacing shadows when it passes over the countless thorny whips dangling from the ceiling and walls.

The dim orange light illuminates a child's bare, pale skin, almost supernaturally smooth and clear, save for the even paler scars that seem to wind all over his arms, legs, and shoulders, plunging into the unseen skin hidden by the dusty sunbleached tank top he's wearing.

Large and bruised violet eyes peek through an unruly, unbrushed mop of black hair, first at the window, where arguing voices can be heard, and then at the door, where the end result of the argument is likely going to appear.

Sure enough, after a few minutes, the familiar towering form of Romolo Zeni appears. The light from behind him rings his blond hair like a halo.

"Get up. We've found it. We're finishing the job."

Gi U gets up.


	16. The Willpower of the Doomed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** gratuitous explicit violence, multiple deaths, implied major character death, explicit major character death, lots of blood, just, loads of blood, physical abuse of a child, Yamazaki Kunihiro

CEDEF's meeting with the Difo goes blessedly well, at least.

"We think the Bambino Beelzebub may be cooperating with other parties to keep himself hidden," Iemitsu tells them. "We have no idea what he looks like, other than his stature, and he may be dependent on it."

"I see. Hence the trouble." The Difo boss puts his cup of sake down. "Thank you for seeing me even though the matter is slight."

Iemitsu bows. "Mafia business is still mafia business, even if it's on our land."

"Have you contacted the Akiyama family?"

"I have. Kouyou Naoki has already sent someone before I came."

"I've always liked tidy business."

They discuss the finer details for a few more minutes, and Iemitsu finally excuses himself to see to his men. He calls up the people already stationed at the edge of the town first.

"The Difo have allowed it," Iemitsu says.

"That's great, boss, but, uh…"

"But…?"

"We can't get in."

Iemitsu stops and frowns at his phone.

"Excuse me?"

"It's a Magician's Shroud, boss. Over the entire city. Everyone entering gets turned right around again. We can't get in, and I don't think anyone can get out. There's no phone signal in there. It's a locked box."

So, the Bambino Beelzebub brought a Mist user. A powerful one. Iemitsu hums speculatively. Most of his Mist users are the subtle type, more prone to hiding themselves and misleading others than massive moves like this; they're the weakest aspect as it is, and finding a strong one capable of this level of manipulation is next to impossible, especially when only five or six families even know about Flames to begin with. He could use a Sun or a Storm to blow through it, but it won't get rid of the Shroud in its entirety, so it opens themselves up to risk.

He only has one person capable of shattering the whole thing.

Iemitsu sighs and looks over his shoulder.

"Call the Varia. Tell the boss that if he brings his illusionist, he gets first crack at the Bambino Beelzebub."

 

* * *

 

Yamazaki is unsettlingly quiet as he walks, only acknowledging them by occasionally slowing down when Shouichi struggles to climb over some stray tree roots. It's almost exactly as bad as watching him manipulate the pants off of Gokudera.

Gokudera himself is quietly steaming away, furious but ultimately helpless. He's focusing pretty hard on keeping track of his surroundings, at least.

Shouichi feels vaguely ill, but somehow less so than he usually is. He may actually be in shock. The impending threat of Yamazaki's schemes mesh weirdly with his good intentions, and Shouichi can't predict what he's going to do. It's making it very hard to worry about awful potential situations, because there are simply  _so many_. And some of them are also good. It's very hard to have an opinion here, is what Shouichi is feeling.

Yamazaki stops in a clearing and turns back to look at them with a grim look on his face. Shouichi feels cold sweat bead on the back of his neck.

Then Yamazaki looks up.

Shouichi follows his gaze to the sky. There doesn't seem to be anything flying up there, or anything suspicious at all. He looks over more of the sky, wondering if it passed already, and that's when he gets it.

The sky has no depth.

It's barely noticeable, but there. A distortion in the air that makes the clouds look flat and too-consistent.

"What  _is_  that?" Shouichi whispers.

"Haha, right? It's called a Magician's Shroud," Yamazaki says. "Most people who use it have it formed around a small battleground. I've never seen one this big."

"What does it do?"

"Can't enter, can't leave, can't contact the outside world. That last one is because atmosphere is too thick."

"Is it like an EM field…?"

"Nope. Illusion."

"What the hell are you two looking at?" Gokudera squints up suspiciously.

"The sky, it doesn't have any depth to it."

"Well, I see a literal ghost miasma, but we can't all be winners. Take this." Yamazaki gives Shouichi the gun.

Shouichi shrieks. "W-What the heck am I supposed to do with this?! And weren't we being kidnapped?"

"You were being  _fake_  kidnapped, because the Akiyama need to do something nice and productive, because when you conspire with a guy like Zeni to steal valuable treasures from the Vongola, an  _'oopsie'_  isn't going to cut it. You are no longer being fake kidnapped, though, because it's  _significantly_  easier and more impressive to just kill an illusionist, and more likely to not go horribly wrong! I'm a flexible guy."

"What? So we're just going on a headhunt now?!" Gokudera yells.

"No, I'm going to go tuck all my students away so they can be safe and not die, and  _then_  I'm going on a headhunt. You, on the other hand, are going to find your little boss, also tuck yourselves away, and not die all by yourselves."

"You flaky bastard—"

"Oh please, my own mother called me that for ten years, you can do better than that."

Gokudera moves to, from what Shouichi can tell, beat his own teacher's skull in. Shouichi drops the gun and impulsively latches his arms under Gokudera's armpits, purely out of a disinclination for violence.

"G-Gokudera-san! It's already dangerous right now!"

"Shaddup!"

Gokudera, quite impressively, does a full-body throw and chucks Shouichi right over his shoulder at Yamazaki. Yamazaki politely sidesteps.

"If you're gonna kill an illusionist, I want in! This whole thing is totally ruining the Boss' vacation!"

_That_ _'s what was bothering him?!_

"I'm sorry, kiddo, but I can't let you do that." Yamazaki places a finger to Gokudera's forehead. "Your job is to protect your boss, isn't it?"

He blinks.

"Well…yes…?"

"Then focus on protecting your Boss. The trail is a little ways west, but I want you off it, on the off chance Zeni or a murder brigade might be there. Until I kill the illusionist, every single one of your lives are in danger, and I think it's really for the best you stick to the person you have the most obligation to."

Gokudera glares hatefully at him. "Oh yeah? So how am I supposed to trust you, Mr. 'Let's make a fake kidnapping against your will'?"

Yamazaki looks down at him with a predatory edge to his eyes. "Do you happen to know why it is that non-lethal weaponry became so popular worldwide?"

"I— huh?"

"To the point where even in a warzone, most artillery are non-lethal…though that wasn't implemented until halfway through World War II. Terribly belated. But you've seen it, haven't you, Hayato-kun? The sheer prevalence, when it would simply be easier to just kill each other? Though I suppose a hitman wouldn't pay that kind of cultural understanding any mind. You kill people all the time, don't you?"

"The hell are you getting at, bastard…?"

"Trust no one, and at the same time, trust everyone." Yamazaki turns his palms up. "Assume you can't rely on anyone, and yet, rely on everyone. Mafia famiglia killing each other is rare, and usually the matter of blood feuds, duels, or rivalries. The mafia even have their own police force to enforce this. For a culture so saturated in death, its members do quite a bit to avoid getting their hands dirty."

"Yeah, so? That's why I was getting paid," Gokudera snarls.

Shouichi is so uncomfortable. He shouldn't be here.

"The point is, Hayato-kun, it's poor taste to kill someone because the person who could be your mortal enemy one day could be an ally another. It's an unmoderated, poorly-maintained current of blood. Sometimes, you have to reduce someone to what use they provide you, even if you hate them more than anything, if you want to survive."

Gokudera's violent, confrontational posture relaxes.

Yamazaki grins. "Right now, my use is that I know how to fight and I have a responsibility to protect my students. Right?"

"You think I can trust that, you yakuza fuck?"

"Is this really the time to be asking that question?" Yamazaki looks to the sky again. "I forgot to mention, but usually, shields like this at this scale only prevent people from entering. For someone to feel the need to create one this big and still double the density to the point that leaving probably isn't possible either…you can guess why they might make that decision, can't you?"

Gokudera pales.

Shouichi can feel another stomach ache coming on.

"…Keep the ginger with you. If you see something and he says there's something wrong, listen to him. He should be able to tell when the Shroud is down. When it is, I want you to get the hell out of town. Whether or not you come back to help doesn't matter to me."

"Why are you putting all this effort into protecting the Boss? You're yakuza. You going to use him too?"

Yamazaki quirks his head. "Because he's Nana-chan's son."

Gokudera blinks. "Nana…Because of  _mamma_?"

"You're probably a little wary of me since I was born a Kouyou. But I never got along with my family." Yamazaki pulls at his necklace. Shouichi assumes he's about to show them something, but he closes whatever's on the chain in his fist. There's an odd distortion around it. "Nana-chan…Well, a few people in the village, actually. I liked them the most. And I liked helping out the Akiyama-kai, because it's something important to the few people I care about. As long as they maintain this group, I want to make it stronger and stronger, until it's unbreakable. Isn't that something you understand?"

Gokudera snorts, but doesn't rise to attack.

"Haha. Kids who want to work for something greater themselves are always the cutest."

Shouichi is dimly aware of the conversation turning in Yamazaki's favour. Not just the conversation, their opinions. He gets up and tries to avoid the temptation to consider Yamazaki a totally good person; just a few minutes ago, he had threatened to murder Gokudera in cold blood—

Something occurs to him. "If you don't get along with your family, why are you bothering Oogawa-san and his mother? She's one of your siblings, isn't she?"

Yamazaki's eyes go deadly sharp, and Shouichi's stomach twists with raw fear.

_**THOOM.** _

The earth shakes under their feet. Yamazaki whips his head around towards the sound, searching.

"That would be your friends. Hurry up, someone might have died already."

"But—"

"Should take you about fifteen minutes at a run. Ten if you leave ginger for dead."

" _Hey!"_

"Gotta go! Remember, get your friends, lay low, and ditch the moment it drops. I don't want any dead children on my hands."

"I'm not done with you—"

"Have fun!"

The teacher dips down to scoop the gun up and dashes off into the trees and out of sight.

Gokudera glares after him, and then looks at Shouichi.

"Why did you drop the gun, gun kid?"

"It's — it barely counts as non-lethal weaponry! It could have  _killed_  somebody!"

"Yeah. That's the idea."

Shouichi gets the terrible, terrible feeling that Gokudera is not a listener.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna pulls himself out of the soupy haze he had drifted in to find himself laying on hard, damp stone, gazing up at a poorly-lit ceiling.

His eyes slide over to a series of lanterns. It looks like he's in some sort of…temple cavern? There's arcane-looking carvings all over the walls, and the floor.

Next, he realizes that his hands and legs are bound, Hana and Takeshi are laying next to him, and they're surrounded by men in suits.

"…Hey."

Hana raises her head. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying. She's wearing a one-piece swimsuit for reasons beyond him.

"…You okay?" She whispers.

Tsuna nods vaguely. "Have you ever repressed a memory that wasn't really traumatizing?"

"I…what?"

"I was traumatized this one time, but I remember all of it," Tsuna says mildly, "but now I'm starting to remember more about the situation. None of it is very traumatizing, though. I guess I was pretty unhappy then, but it wasn't a huge deal. I wonder why I would repress  _those_  memories, instead of, you know, everything actually awful that happened to me."

"We're taken prisoner by a bunch of mafia dudes and the thing you're most freaked out about is your shit memory?"

"I don't know enough about this situation to be afraid," Tsuna remarks blandly.

" _Yoouuu!"_  Hana squirms against her constraints.

"How is Takeshi doing?"

Hana turns to look over her shoulder. "I don't know, he's kinda…"

Staring off into space, unmoving, weirdly intense.

Takeshi's eyes flick down, making Hana flinch. "I'm okay."

Tsuna looks him over. Unlike Hana and him, who are tied up with ropes, Takeshi has some sort of weird blue cord covered in black bumps, likely because it's very hard to tie someone's wrists together when they have a broken arm, and also because ropes are less useful when only tied around the upper arms.

Takeshi looks back up to continue his uncomfortably focused staring contest with…his baseball bag.

Tsuna raises his eyebrows at that, then looks at Hana. "So what happened?"

"We took you out on a little hiking trip as a joke, and got kidnapped by these Italian jerk-offs. Oogawa-kun and Onii-san came too, but I don't know what happened to them." Her expression darkens. "There was some sort of noise…"

"I was there for that. There was this big piece of rock that collapsed."

"Did you see either of them?"

Tsuna shakes his head. Hana's expression tightens.

"They're looking for something in here," Takeshi says without blinking or acknowledging them in any way. "Whatever it is, it has something to do with the marks everywhere glowing."

"Yeah…when that noise happened, the whole place lit up. They're acting like it has something to do with us just because we were in here."

"Did the interrogation already happen?"

"No, the guy in charge left to…"

Just then, three figures enter — a portly Japanese man, a tall, well-dressed blond white man with long hair and an impeccably trimmed beard, and a small child with tangled black hair, a tattered coat, and sunken violet eyes that glow eerily in the lantern light.

The Japanese man frowns when he sees them. "Looks like you ran into some trouble anyway."

"Yes, yes, curious kids and all that. They seem to be from that little pack of baby volunteers. The ones you failed to clean up." The blond guy grins and puts a firm hand on the Japanese man's shoulder. His grip looks painful.

"A-About that…" He pulls away and tightens his jaw. "…The reason we failed was because they weren't ours to clean up. Those kids belong to the Koyama school, which belongs to the Akiyama-kai. Plus, someone from the main family is covering them…They're already going to shut us down, so it's probably for the best that we stop here."

The blond man pauses in the middle of the room. His eyes are on Tsuna, who is staring him down right back, but his attentions seem elsewhere.

"That wasn't the deal."

"The deal was made assuming you were just stealing some shit and bailing. This whole situation is starting to stink. Just how valuable is this thing you're taking from the—"

The man flicks a hand up. The child rushes into movement; with one flick of the arm, the Japanese man is bound in the same bumpy blue ropes Takeshi is.

"I wouldn't struggle," the child mumbles. "The more you strain against Blue Thorn, the tighter it'll get. It's a crushing weapon."

"W-What the hell are you doing?"

"Do you know my name?"

"What? Zeni!"

"Does anyone else in your group know my name?"

"Of course, you damn—"

"What about the main family? Any associates outside this town? Even some of the citizens? Do any of them know?"

The man goes still. Tsuna can see sweat on his brow.

"I didn't think so," Zeni laughs. "Because you knew you were being bad from the start."

"What does it matter? The…They'll incriminate you soon enough! My men will…"

"Not really." Zeni whirls around on his heel. "You see, when the Vongola or the CEDEF come over here, they won't be looking for an Italian mafia boss with a penchant for collection. They'll be looking for the Bambino Beelzebub." He places one wide, impeccably manicured hand on the child's head. "We made sure to leave clues."

Tsuna feels his heartrate speed up.  _Vongola_ …One of the only mafia families he's ever managed to tease out of a google search at six years old, so they're presumably a big group. He was six years old, so he never thought to research anything about them, unfortunately enough. They just sound kind of important. He was too young and too dumb to connect 'father might be in the mafia' with 'big mafia, may know father'. He's long since lost his opportunity to ask anyone directly, though. He tries to tell himself this is a good thing.

"So…So what! The Akiyama have deals with the…with the Vongola, and the Wren Authority! We can just…"

"Who can just? Listen, Morita, I like you, but you cutting off the deal is baaaad news for me. I haven't found jack shit in the past week. I'm a little irritated. All I need is one more day, now, because I just had this great breakthrough, and you're telling me that you can't even manage that?"

"I…I…" Morita looks pale with fear. Tsuna is a little more concerned at how blank the child's expression is. He actually looks kind of bored.

"I'm doing so much for you! Giving you so much money! And then you get your ass kicked by middle-schoolers and bend over backwards for a single member of the main family?"

"I-It's the main family's schoo—"

"I don't  _ **CARE**_!" Tsuna and Hana jump back at the sound of his voice and the crack and sizzle of electricity in the air. Tsuna notes Zeni has a finger claw on his other hand, and it is glittering wildly.

"We did enough," Morita whispers hoarsely.

"Obviously not, because I'm getting reports of men in suits pooling on the highways, and the only reason they're not marching in here is the fact I brought an illusionist in! One day, Morita!  _One day!_ _"_

"Well there's not much you can do now! Just leave it! We all know who we've been doing business with!"

"Well thank goodness none of you will be around to share that information," Zeni handwaves.

Morita shrivels. "…The hell do you mean…?"

"I told you, they think the Bambino Beelzebub stole the records leading me here. Just like they'll think it was the Bambino Beelzebub who killed each and every one of you, and all those little kids too."

A drop of ice travels down Tsuna's spine. Hana sucks in a sharp gasp through her nose. Takeshi goes completely still.

"You…"

"It could have been so easy, Morita. I'm really sorry I have to do this."

"No…No!" Morita squirms against the cords, but Tsuna can see them dig even deeper into his flesh. He swallows thickly. "No you, we had a, we had a deal!"

"You broke it, Morita. You know I hate broken promises."

"No, I have…I have more information!" Morita looks wildly around the room, and his eyes lock onto Tsuna. "Like him!"

Tsuna curls away from his gaze, and even further from Zeni's emerald green glare.

"Oh?"

"He's the, listen…He's got ties in the mafia, yeah?" Morita squirms even more. "Son of some bigwig. Real huge authority in the Vongola, you know. And…and that's not all!"

"I can't possibly believe there's more." Zeni looks only mildly pleased at the information, like seeing someone forget to take his change at the till. The look makes Tsuna uncertain and somewhat sick.

"The Akiyama have a thing for him," Morita wheezes. "There was this whole fight when his pops came to ask for protection. He's not bloodline, but…but his gran, she's disowned the family, but she's in with Tsukioka. She was the fifth in line, back in the day, you know. That makes him…nowadays, he's gotta be about the thirteenth. He's got sway."

Hana gives Tsuna a searching look. Tsuna opens his eyes wide and shakes his head. His mom has never said anything about her mother or family issues, besides a bunch of cousins and a very pointed aversion towards family gatherings. She used to live in Hakuyou, sure, but that usually means you were  _friends_  with the yakuza, not  _one of them_.

"His grandma is a disowned member of a branch family. That's cute. I'm sure that'll be useful if every single one of the last three generations of Kouyou suddenly die. I like that thing about him being from the Vongola, though."

Morita smiles weakly.

"…If the Bambino Beelzebub kills him, lord, the Urayama will look downright heroic for laying down their lives in revenge!"

Morita's smile drops.

"I feel like that's a lot easier to sell, actually. Don't you, kiddo?"

The child glances up at Zeni dispassionately. "Hurry up. You interrupted me while I was working."

"You were holed up in there for days, a piss break would have been an interruption," Zeni dismisses. "Alright, hold him still."

Tsuna roughly understands what's about to happen, but he's not sure how to react. Hana is staring on with steadily climbing horror, which Tsuna assumes is the normal way to go about it. Takeshi is still staring at the bag, which Tsuna assumes is not even a little bit normal.

Morita lets out an aborted scream when Zeni takes out a gun. Takeshi jerks into motion, trying to get to his knees, but he wheezes as the cords around his arms constrict. With them tightening and his ankles bound, he can't get up. Tsuna has a broken rib, so he'll likely get the same results, and Hana looks too terrified to try anything.

Tsuna can only watch as the gun is raised, aimed at Morita's head, and…

_**BANG.** _

All three flinch. Hana shrieks. Takeshi squeezes his eyes shut and turns his face to the floor.

Tsuna stares blankly at Morita's brains splattered all over the wall, and his ears are ringing too loudly for him to hear the body drop.

The boy didn't even flinch. He just flicks his arm up, so the cord rolls off the body and slides back into his sleeve.

Tsuna's gaze lowers to the floor. He can hear Hana sobbing softly next to him.

"Honestly. So fucking stupid," Zeni huffs. He turns to the men in suits. "Alright, kill the yakuza and the kids. If there's any Difo men, kill them too, but you don't really have to. If anyone asks, cute lil' Beelzebub over here said he'd give you his cool toys if you helped. You're not mafia, they'll buy it."

They nod and rush out of the room, leaving only two.

Zeni turns to the boy. "Figure out what the fuck happened, get into the tomb, get me the toy, and I will give you every bit of information you need. Green Door, your family, whatever you like. Kill the witnesses when you're done."

Tsuna closes his eyes and tries to control his breathing.

The boy makes a displeased noise. "I probably could have gotten something if you didn't drag me around with you."

Zeni laughs.

Then he grabs the boy by the head and slams his skull into the wall.

Hana wheezes and scrunches up, and Takeshi is clenching his teeth so hard Tsuna thinks they might crack.

The boy bounces and slumps to the ground. Zeni lets out a forceful, frustrated exhale, and places one stylish shoe onto his back. "Don't be a smartass and do your job."

He gives the crumpled, tattered form one last kick and marches out of the room as well.

A thick, horrible silence rests over the six people left. The two men left guarding them don't seem to care much for everything that just happened, or the boy's collapsed form on the floor.

Tsuna finds it's getting much harder to breathe.

Hana's sobbing is getting louder, and Takeshi's breathing is coming in erratic.

The boy stirs, makes a disgusted noise, and gets up, looking for all the world like he had just stepped in dog shit.

"…Get rid of the body," he says to the suited man closest to him.

"But—"

"I'm injured! You saw that, didn't you? Now my head is sore. I don't want to do it. Let me rest a bit," the boy whines, collapsing onto a fallen pillar and looking imperiously at the two down his nose. "Clean it up already. It's too heavy for me anyway."

The men look to each other and nod. One of them takes the body and starts dragging it out of the room too.

The boy digs into his pockets and yanks out a bag of crackers. He pulls it open, takes out a stack of eight, and stuffs his mouth. His nose wrinkles.

"Stale."

Tsuna can only taste the blood and gunsmoke in the air.

 

* * *

 

The sight of Sasagawa being knocked into the stone slab keeps playing behind Miki's eyelids, and each time it does his exhaustion becomes harder and harder to remember. The sight of the blood splatter seems to wash it all away.

He's not a physical person. He's weedy, and has no muscle mass whatsoever. He doesn't exercise much. Most of his time is spent inside, undereating and never leaving his bedroom except for convenience store trips. He hates to admit it, but he's never been comfortable going outside. He was always too scared, even to follow his dad out to paint the sunrise somewhere calm and isolated. The outside has always been scary. This isn't what he's meant for.

But tears are stinging his eyes and his lungs are raw and all he can think of is Sasagawa dying, skull cracked open against hard stone, and the same thing happening to him, and Gokudera, and everyone, and he can't stop, no matter how much his body hurts.

They had walked pretty far uphill, and Miki isn't even taking the path on top of that, so getting back is taking far longer than it should. But stumbling through the forest at a slow pace is a better idea than speeding right into someone ready to kill him.

He streaks through the bushes, until it starts looking familiar; the place where the students hid away during the raid. He's close. He pushes himself further, pumping his legs, ignoring how his open shirt gets snagged on branches, he has to move, he has to move, and Miki finally falls into open air, the piles of garbage spread out before him. The relief bleeds him of his energy all at once.

There's more people now; actual Miyazawa residents helping out. One older man is standing next to Uenohara, pointing something out to a group of three. The relief finally swallows him, because there's an adult here, and that adult is not Uncle Kunihiro.

Miki collapses at the foot of their mound, and slaps his hand against the twisted remnants of a stove to get their attention.

"U…Ue…haa…Uenohara…haa…Uenohara-san…" He wheezes.

She looks down at him sharply and skids down to meet him.

"The…There were…men…up… _haa_ …hill… _haa_ …" He raises a shaking arm to point at the trail. "They… _haa_ …they killed… _haa_ …They killed…!"

Uenohara jerks up and leaps back up the mound. She stands on her tip-toes to whisper something in the man's ear, and the man straightens abruptly and looks over the volunteers.

"YOU KIDS PACK UP!" He bellows. "GET YOUR TENTS READY! WE'VE GOT A MURDER CASE, AND WE NEED YOU ACCOUNTED FOR!"

 _That_ gets them moving. They crawl across the garbage to get at their tents. Miki relaxes and lets himself spread over the trash like a ragdoll. His face is hot, and his lungs feel like they're full of melted sour candy. His muscles ache horribly, and his heart aches even more. He's too dizzy to even sit up.

After a small eternity of controlling his breathing and getting his oxygen flow back to normal all while suffering an agonizing replay of Sasagawa's crushed head and Tsuna's oblivious form left behind as Miki ran away, he opens his eyes.

Uenohara is leaning over him, three-coloured hair dangling just above his nose.

Miki blinks away tears and sits up.

"…They were all western men," he says after a moment, and shakes his head. "Italian. They're looking for something."

Uenohara looks towards the tents. The students are having a hard time packing up.

Miki lets out a breath, and and goes over to help. Uenohara breaks off to go talk to the man again, and the man frowns and runs off into town, only to be replaced by a woman, who gets to helping the students too.

Miki's hands are shaking uncontrollably, but he bites his lip, slides his shades back onto his face, and does his best to be useful. No one yells at him this time. There's a single-minded solemnity to it. No one claims bravado. Those arrogant enough to try were already scared by the raid. They're oddly efficient, now, for a bunch of good-for-nothing delinquents.

When their bags are all packed, they load up the bus. Miki stands in place, staring at the forest and the trail, waiting for men in suits to descend on them.

"Hey! The hell is going on?"

Miki turns slightly to see someone marching towards them, and he thinks  _god please, no more, let us go_.

"One of the kids just got murdered," the woman now in charge snarls. "We're getting the rest out of here."

"The hell, who did it?"

"Italians, we hear it."

"The hell is that Morita doing…" The man spits at the ground. "No one's leaving until I get an explanation. The way  _I_ _'m_  hearing it, someone's tempting war."

"Children could die—"

"Then hide them until we work something out," the man barks.

The woman sucks in a breath through her nose, lets it out through her mouth, and turns to the Koyama students. "EVERYONE, HEAD TO THE BUTCHER DOWN THE STREET, HE'S GOT A BUNKER."

Uenohara waves at them, and they follow her lead. Miki steps closer to the woman, anxious for an authority figure.

"What do you know?" The man asks him.

"I don't…I just saw Italian men going in to the ruin up the hill. They…One of them…Sasagawa-san confronted them when they came in, and one of them, he had these…he had this fire, and he took him by the head and…" Miki squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to be sick.

"Flame user," the man says, then, "definitely the mafia, then."

Miki doesn't see why it's important if they're mafia or not.

"Don't bother trying to leave. The city's been put under an illusion. You'll get turned right around."

Miki doesn't know what an illusion is.

"Is the Difo going to take care of it?" The woman asks.

The man sighs. "There's only three of us, and none of our calls are getting through. Until we find the illusionist, we're trapped in here."

Miki raises his head. "Illusions…what do you mean by that?"

"Think of it like an electromagnetic field that fucks with your head, for now. No electronic waves getting out, no people getting out, and absolutely no one getting in."

He holds a hand to his mouth. Tears stream from his eyes and trickle over his fingers.  _There is no conspiracy,_  he told himself, but the world does not revolve around him, and there is always politics. People tend to die when criminals get involved in politics. Why was he only thinking about himself? He had the power to tell everyone to go home last night. He should have done something. Now they're all going to die.

The woman turns to look at him. "Oh, honey, go with the rest of them. We'll take care of it. Plenty of people here willing to fight."

They didn't fight before, though. No one did.

Miki nods and steps away from them, ready to regroup with the rest of the Koyama students.

Then there's a loud popping sound, and he's sprayed with something warm.

The woman lets out a scream, and through the darkened, fluid-speckled glass of his shades, he sees the man laying facedown on the ground with a dark spot in his hair, surrounded by a red pool.

The woman takes off while she's still hidden by the corner of the building. Miki can't even move. He's not even sure what he's looking at. Blood?

Someone steps in front of him.

"They sure packed up quickly. Weren't you with the group up there? Sneaky little shit, aren't you?"

Miki slowly takes his hand away from his mouth. There's red spray all over it, warm on his skin, but not as hot as the dripping sensation on his face.

There's three men standing in front of him, aiming a gun at his head.

"Anything you want to tell us?"

Miki's mouth hangs open. He feels ill.

When he was seven years old, he went to school after being sick for two weeks, and his mother gripped his shoulders tight and told him  _don_ _'t look, don't look_. And he didn't. He thought that maybe he just had to stay like that, avoid eye contact, wear shades, lock himself in his bedroom and never, ever come out.

Every time he went back to school, it was the same problem. He used his powers. He was being stalked. Uncle Kunihiro forced him to experience how cruel the Underworld could be by making him witness the full brunt of his panic attacks. Miki was sure he had the answer.  _He can_ _'t interact with criminals. He can't interact with his family. He can't use his powers. He can't go out into the world._

But that was stupid, and now people are dead.

That was stupid, but now Miki is here, not in his house. Miki is in danger and scared. Miki is a role model. This does not have to be a bad thing.  _This does not have to be a bad thing._

His hand lifts up and pushes his shades up to his hairline. As his vision of the three men returns in the bright glare of the morning sun, he sees one of them go slack.

He makes direct eye contact with that one and mentally prays his mother for forgiveness. He opens his mouth.

**[Shoot them.]**

The man he's making eye contact with raises his gun, and without blinking, shoots the other two point blank. Miki doesn't see where; he squeezes his eyes shut before the trigger is pulled.

He breathes heavily, each ragged inhale tainted with the thickness of a sob, and he can feel the tears cutting through the blood splatter over his face. Not crying seems like some impossible task, and he desperately wants to give up and black out, but his eyes burn with Sasagawa being slammed against the stone, and stomach is pulled apart with how he turned and ran, how he left not just Sawada, but also his friends behind, and he knows he can't black out until he does something that will let him look Gokudera in the eye again.

He hiccups and lets the man bury his fingers in his hair.

"The guy who hired me…I figured he wanted to kill the yakuza, but then he said the kids have to die too," he says distantly. Miki blinks his eyes open and looks up at him, trying his best to focus on looking defenseless. "It's fucked up, is what it is. Not worth the money and a famiglia. I'm just poor. I'm not a monster."

"Can you help me?"

"Listen, I…" The man wavers. He doesn't want to. He's probably scared for his life.

Miki nods. "Can you keep everyone safe until help comes?"

"Yeah…Yeah, the least I could do."

The man runs after the rest of the kids.

Miki looks over the forest again.

Right. He can't control these eyes yet. So he just has to find someone even easier to manipulate.

"Sorry, mom. I know I promised not to."

Miki takes off his shades, slides them onto his neckline, and takes off into a run back into the trees, doing his best to ignore the three bodies he's leaving behind.

 

* * *

 

It isn't until a good ten minutes passes and the second man returns that the boy talks again.

"I'm Gi U," he says, still in that oddly distanced voice.

Hana is hiding in her hair, still crying. Takeshi looks up at his voice, though, eyes fever-bright.

"Hey there. I'm Yamamoto Takeshi," Takeshi says, oddly similar to how he spoke when he was trying to talk to Tsuna in the classroom for the first time.

"One of you," Gi U continues, "are a producer of Sage aura."

"What's that?"

"I suppose you could call it magic. It's blue."

"Haha, neat! Magic powers!"

Tsuna feels like he's going to throw up. Takeshi hasn't even managed to control his breathing yet. He looks stressed, and if released, he'd probably be out of here in seconds to rip Zeni's spine out through his asshole.

Personally, Tsuna feels more immediately intimidated by Gi U himself. There's something terribly familiar about that abstract distance in his expression, his voice.

"Neither of you have ever made blue aura come out of you?" Gi U asks, looking Hana and Takeshi over speculatively.

"Can't say we have! What do you need it for?"

"This is the tomb of one of the most powerful Sage-aspect…'magic' users in history," Gi U says. He gestures to the walls. "Most of the tomb opens up when it has that energy flowing through it."

"That's why the door opened when it all went blue, huh?" Takeshi's voice is too unstable, too off. Not even a ten-year-old who's barely paying attention could be fooled by it.

"Mm."

"So, how are you going to figure out how to make the magic stuff?"

Gi U gets up and stands in front of Takeshi. Takeshi's eyes are damp and still somewhat crazed. Tsuna averts his own eyes and tries to control the trembling that's been gripping him ever since Morita's brains were emptied out onto the stone walls.

He's not even wearing any shoes.

Gi U cocks his head and pulls Hana's gun out from his pocket. Tsuna stiffens; Hana doesn't react, seeing as her hair deprives of the peripheral vision required to see it.

"I'm going to shoot you, and then I'm going to shoot them," Gi U says matter-of-factly.

Yes, Tsuna feels familiarity from Gi U. It's the recognition of someone who doesn't terribly care whether you live or die. Of someone who doesn't terribly care if  _they_  live or die.

Tsuna has seen that kind of face in the mirror pretty often.

"Can't we talk this out?" Takeshi asks.

Tsuna sucks all the air he can manage into his lungs and uses the wall to prop himself up. The two men take a step forward warningly. Tsuna shuffles close, dependent on every second Gi U spends staring at Takeshi with an alien absentness, every second he has to keep moving.

"Sit your ass back down," one man starts, and Tsuna gives up and just leaps forward.

Just in time to fall short.

Just in time for the pop of the gun explode against his eardrums.

Just in time to see a bullet hole drive itself right into the forehead of Takeshi's open, desperately hopeful face.

Tsuna digs his forehead into the carved stone floor and lets out a voiceless scream.


	17. The Willpower of the Dying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Torture, mentions of vomiting, suicide ideation, Yamazaki Kunihiro

Everything is very calm.

Everything is very cold.

Everything is crushing up against him.

Does he have any regrets?

His mind blurs, and his skull feels like it’s going to crack open.

Does he have any regrets?

His wrist is freezing.

Does he have any regrets?

_He regrets getting that ball machineHe regrets going down to the basinHe regrets skipping out on work at the restaurant for practice that would eventually be pointless anywayHe regrets not talking to Tsuna no matter how much it made sense at the timeHe regrets not reaching out and talking to peopleHe regrets reaching out every time it never amounted to anythingHe regrets not hugging his mother every second she was still alive_

Takeshi’s head hurts and everything tastes like copper and the colour blue.

Does he have any regrets?

_He regrets seeing his dad with several opened, coloured bottles, slumped over a table, and then turning around and going back to bed and never talking about it again,_

_He regrets seeing someone die and wanting to say it was bad but he opened his mouth and said ‘thank you dad’ and didn’t care at all and spent weeks wondering if there was something wrong with him and maybe his dad thought he was a bad kid now,_

_He regrets that he didn’t cry at the funeral and though he still doesn’t know why he didn’t he wants to go back and cut some onions over his eyes until people could think he loved his mom at all,_

_He regrets obsessively maintaining the strange blackness wrapped around his heart, like letting it be might erase how he sees hi—_

— _He regrets himself,_

_He regrets himself,_

_He regrets himself,_

_He regrets himself._

He regrets that he existed at all.

The icy feeling around his wrist starts to stretch outward.

 

* * *

 

“ _What did you **DO?** ”_

Hana’s screaming is like claws down a chalkboard.

Tsuna is dizzy, and his throat is held to tight to release the bile threatening to emerge from his churning stomach. His hands are outstretched, one clutched around Takeshi’s wrist, like maybe if he shook it enough, he would miraculously recover from the bullet in his skull. Red fluid from whatever was in the bullet mixes oddly with his blood, trickling out in two tones of crimson. His eyes are staring blankly off into space, and Tsuna feels like he’s floating in a vacuum looking into them.

“Your gun fires all kinds of bullets,” Gi U says. He doesn’t seem to care at all about what he’s done. “…Looks like this one didn’t work, though? Maybe he was the wrong type.”

“LET ME GO!” Hana howls, kicking at one of the men trying to stand in between her and Gi U. “YOU LITTLE PIGSHIT! LET ME _GO_!”

Tsuna feels a yawning, endless smoothness, silky across the jagged edges of horror and fear and sickness. It feels like a blanket suffocating a blaze.

Gi U’s attention slides to her, slowly, consistently, and with an eerie transience to it. “I might do better with you.”

“ _YOU KILLED HIM!”_

“Probably,” Gi U says, simply.

Tsuna’s brow furrows. The blaze flickers. His vision is swimming.

“The reaction changes sometimes.” Gi U places a bare foot onto Takeshi’s chest. Tsuna wants to bite it off, peel the skin away with his teeth. He’s clutching Takeshi’s wrist so hard he’s almost afraid he might break it. “…No reaction is something to be expected too. A bullet’s a bullet. Without a reaction, he’ll probably die.”

“Wha…So he’s not…” Hana forces herself back to her knees and looks at Gi U furiously through her tangled hair. “FIX HIM then!”

“Can’t. It’s his fault anyway.” Gi U tilts Takeshi’s body back and forth. Tsuna can feel the push and pull through his arm. “It’s not very hard to recover from. Ajeossi told me. Just have to regret not doing something, and there you go. Normally you’d regret not saving everyone, or something. I guess he was a coward after all?”

“ _ **SHUT UP!”**_

“Oh well. I can’t do anything now. It’s a bit of an execution tool, you know. If you aren’t regretting anything, your thoughts turn against you. Everything you’ve ever regretted. Eating you up until you turn inside-out. It sort of like torturing someone to death, I suppose. I mean, some people have survived it, but then they try to kill themselves with their dying will. So you know, even if he comes back, it doesn’t matter?”

Hana looks at him in horror. Tsuna slowly sits up, hand still clutching Takeshi’s wrist, and looks around him.

The blood splatter on the wall looks huge in comparison to the pool of red under Takeshi’s head. Gi U looks only mildly interested in the discussion. The other men in the room are like white noise. They don’t even feel real.

They’re barely real.

They disappear.

“Well, it’s called a dying will bullet for a reason. He’s gotta go ahead and die first.” Gi U uses his toes to nudge Takeshi’s head back and forth. “Should only take a few minutes?”

And for the first time in what feels like forever, Tsuna does not want to give up.

“Don’t die,” he whispers. He can barely hear Hana’s furious wails, the sound of rushing water, shifting rock, Gi U’s bare feet against the stone floor as he paces.

“ _Please don’t die.”_

 

* * *

 

It’s getting harder to focus.

Two figures sit on a sofa, tapping their index fingers in a perfect mirror image, dripping with irritation. One is a boy, dark hair hanging over his eyes, and the other is a woman, visage hidden behind a black funeral shroud. They’ve been trying to focus on maintaining the Magician’s Shroud, which they had been promised they _wouldn’t have to make,_ but there’s something new to be pissed off about, now.

What the _hell_ is the thorn child doing?

Their Shroud is perfection incarnate, a beautiful bubble of pure omnipotent awareness. They have eyes everywhere. It isn’t something they could perform individually; they need one body for managing, one for sheer power. Even so, the results speak for themselves. At the expense of being able to perform complex illusions, they can see every inch of the town.

Except for the Tomb, where the thorn child is.

They don’t even know how he did it. He shouldn’t have that kind of power. It’s one black gap, like some sort of bizarre, unstable, gooey anti-flame flickering away barely a kilometre away. The absence feels like a sore on their awareness. They had placed about eight illusions of foot soldiers in that ruin and now it’s been punched out of existence. He can’t even remember if there were any real people still stationed there. He would have checked, if he had thought for a moment anything could be capable of doing something like this.

The boy on the left flicks open his phone and dials the number of one of the men who was traveling with Zeni.

“What’s going on?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” the gruff voice returns.

“There’s a hole in my Shroud,” he snaps, and then flinches at his own quickness to anger. He carefully composes himself and tries again. “What is Zeni having the young beelzebub do, precisely?”

“Dunno. Zeni sent me off to murder children.”

He clicks his tongue.

“Never mind. I’ll figure it out soon enough.”

He hangs up.

They were distracted by the phone call, and when their attentions flare out again, they realize they’ve been infiltrated rather thoroughly.

The boy stands and wanders over to the window with a lazy grace. Outside is a ruined courtyard, and a lush forest, dotted with long-ignored trash. He doubts it will be there for very long.

Standing there, surrounded by molten slag, in the process of turning another human being into red soup, is a man with hair the colour of autumn leaves in a sunset.

The boy has never seen anything like him before. He’s tempted to call it magic, though logically, he always knew that a world where illusions were possible might contain something of this nature. He’s seen it before, felt it before, but it’s never melted people to death before his eyes, so he never went far enough to call it a _thing_.

Sometimes he has dreams of the air moving in colour, half memory and half his own perceptions, and the sensation of the fire coming out of that man’s hands matches the colour they’re blazing in.

Red, on red, on red.

The woman of the pair’s phone rings. She picks it up, as the boy watches the man hold a phone to his ear.

“Guess who’s come to kill every single fuck threatin’ my kids~!”

“Oh. All those murdered children belong to you,” the girl says.

“To-be-murdered, thanks, and hopefully not even that. They’re all safe! Isn’t that awesome!” The man stands and holds his hands out, with the phone held between his shoulder and ear. “Great day for me, getting to kill people before they murder all my kids!”

“Do you think you can stop me? You should know I’m powerful.”

“Yeah. Illusionists. Pain in the ass. But the way I see it…” He holds a hand out to point at the boy in the window. “Illusions only work when you believe them, and all I believe in is how dead you’re going to be in the next ten minutes.”

The boy chuckles. He’s heard that one before.

(Not that anyone’s ever survived to feel embarrassed about it.)

“What do you hope to achieve by breaking the Shroud?”

“What, you kidding? Pop the bubble, pop the plan.” The man takes a few steps forward, and the ground melts under his feet. It was hard to see before, but he appears to be entirely bathed in that angry red _something_. The boy doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s mildly disconcerted.

He thought he’d have to climb the ladder a little more before he got to see actual, literal manifested magic firsthand. Coming from anyone other than himself, given.

Still.

“You’re a little off the mark,” the boy says, and it’s echoed by the girl.

Then, they speak as one, for they are one.

“Did you really think he’d start a raid on the Vongola without a true fighter or two to back him up?”

 

* * *

 

Miki’s fingernails dig into his hand so hard he can feel the shockwaves of pain up his arm. He’d like to say his senses are addled, but everything is really happening crystal clear to him, which makes it all the worse.

“Take…take another one off,” he whispers.

His latest catch nods and easily puts the pliers around the third fingernail of the man he has pinned to the ground, and…

Miki squeezes his eyes shut and turns away, even though he knows that is a terrible idea when the only reason you aren’t dead is because you can mind-control people with your eyes.

The screams ripple under Miki’s skin. His breath stutters, and he forces to make eye contact with his catch, in the very least.

“We can just tie him up,” he suggests, looking at Miki pityingly. “You don’t gotta watch this. You’ve got no stomach for it.”

Miki shakes his head stiffly and kneels down to look at the man he’s torturing, this time. He tries to steady his breaths. Surely, after going through this degree of pain, helping a young boy survive in a scary battle would be easy.

He chokes on his words the first time he tries to speak, struggles for a moment, and then manages to get the command out properly. _**[Help me.]**_

“F…” The man starts, and Miki feels hopeful a moment, until the man’s face twists and he spits at Miki’s knees. “Fuck you.”

Miki frowns.

If he has to extend this session even more, he will probably faint from stress.

“Okay. We can…we’ll tie him up.”

“Don’t worry kiddo.” His fully-glamoured subordinate ruffles his hair. “It’s good you aren’t gone enough to be okay with it. Means you’re a good kid. Means you’re worth something.”

“Yes,” Miki says faintly. “I’m worth quite a lot.”

He remembers it was summer, in a grove of maple trees, and Uncle Kunihiro crouched down to meet him at eye level and gripped his shoulders and said _“Ohh, you’re amazing, aren’t you, that’s more than just dad’s blood, your mama must be so proud,”_ and he looked at him like he was a piece of meat, and Miki didn’t know who this strange high-schooler with the too-bright eyes was back then, but he had felt warm at the praise.

Then his mom and Uncle Naoki came in screaming and Uncle Kunihiro wouldn’t stop looking at him the entire time, like he was the sun and the sky and the stars.

Miki was just a kid, but he was stupid to ever think that was a form of praise, that it was anything to feel vindicated about, that Uncle Kunihiro was looking at anything but the power in his eyes, and he hates himself for smiling back. For giving Uncle Kunihiro an opportunity to ensnare him.

He is worth quite a lot. He is worth so much he’s ruined his mom’s life. He is worth so much that he’s probably ruined his own. He is worth so much that he wouldn’t be surprised if this entire situation was all his fault.

Miki buries his face in his hands and allows him a small, broken sob of frustration. It was a mistake to feel praised by Gokudera too. He was drawn in by a skill of Miki’s, not Miki himself. Miki himself has no value. He’s a vessel to a number of useful tools that could get him places, if only he were competent enough to use them.

Instead, he’s forced to simply be used by people who actually know what they’re doing.

_Not today, though._

Miki wipes his eyes and makes eye contact with his follower again. He feels a sting of empathy, even though he knows this man will probably be shot and killed within the hour, and he’ll have to replace him soon enough. He hopes that won’t happen. He’s been very kind.

“What’s your name?” Miki asks.

“Benedetto,” the grizzled man replies easily, consumed with pure trust. “You can call me Ben.”

“…Thank you. Ben-san.”

“Don’t worry. It was rubbing me wrong anyway, killing all these people. I’ll help you stop them.”

It would be heroic, if Miki wasn’t literally controlling his mind. Miki’s mouth twitches with bitter humour.

They make their way through the forest again. It’s a pain traveling from the main street straight to the trail; there’s so much forest between, and their progress is stalling because they have to avoid the hiking trails and roads. Benedetto — Ben — is helping by keeping him steady as Miki tries to clumsily climb over tree roots, but it’s slow-going.

They stop by a trail when they see two men walking past, arguing with one another. Miki takes in a breath. Ben puts a comforting hand on his shoulder and holds up his gun as a form of reassurance.

It’s all terribly morbid.

Miki stands and walks into sight. The two men stop and raise their gun at him, glaring suspiciously. Miki is horribly relieved he had decided against wearing his school uniform today.

“There are…there are men running around, killing people,” he wibbles, but he’s already resolute in what has to happen when neither of them buckle. Man, these are awful, awful people.

He gives the signal. Ben shoots both of them in the kneecaps. Miki quickly grabs their weapons and gives them to Ben.

“You’re getting better,” Ben assures him.

Miki wants to give Ben a hug, but instead he just nods and marches back into the trees.

For the longest time the fact he can’t control people who don’t already want to obey him was a comfort, but now it’s just a looming guillotine over his head.

It feels like forever before he reaches the basin. They’re already at sea level, overlooking the ruins easily. There aren’t too many people around. Miki’s heart aches, and he decides in the very least, he should bring Sasagawa’s corpse back, as gorey as it must look now. He eyes the slab that had split in half from the impact warily. If only he had some way to confirm whether or not that horrible man coated in horrible flames was here…

“Something you want?”

Miki flinches, and nods stiffly. “My friend…my friend’s body. He should be in the water. He’s…he’s my age. But muscular.”

“Sorry for your loss.”

Miki gives a one-shouldered shrug. He’s too stressed to grieve. He can break down later.

Ben climbs over the ruins, scanning the water. Miki hides in a small crevice and buries his face in his knees.

The power is starting to make his head hot. He doubts he’ll be able to use his influence for much longer, and that thought scares him. He’s weak and he’s useless and he’s about to burn out.

He’s pathetic.

“Hey! Kid!”

Miki starts. Right. No time for self-loathing right now. Maybe…maybe Ben will feel committed enough to helping him out that if worse comes to worse, he’ll take Miki with him if he decides to ditch. In the very least, he can survive this, so he just has to…Work something out until then.

Miki climbs back out and looks around.

“Over here! Is this who you were talking about?”

He follows Ben’s voice. On the shoreline next to the mouth of the opening that leads to the ocean stands Ben, next to a figure lying on the ground. Miki notes that Ben is not wet.

“Did you just find him lying there?”

“Yeah.”

Miki carefully tip-toes over fallen slabs and unstable bricks to his side, and he frowns at the body.

Sasagawa’s skull does not look caved in.

He’s definitely bleeding, and half his forehead is one giant bruise, but the skull looks fine. He must have died from the internal damage. Brains aren’t meant to be shaken up that badly.

Miki kneels down at Sasagawa’s side. He feels terrible for leaving him. For leaving Sawada as well. He feels terrible about everything.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. His eyes rake over the slight bruises on his form, some blooming around his elbows from being dragged back u—

Miki blinks.

“Sa…Sasagawa…san…?”

He clumsily takes Sasagawa’s wrist for a pulse. He doesn’t feel anything. Frustrated and not entirely confident in his first aid know-how, Miki holds an ear to Sasagawa’s mouth.

A ghost of air grazes it.

“He’s still alive,” Miki rasps.

“ _What?”_

“He’s…he’s still bruising, his heart’s still working, he’s still breathing, he’s alive!” Miki clutches at Sasagawa’s chest, fresh tears spilling over. “Wake up! You have to wake up! We’re not safe, I don’t know where Sawada is, you have to wake up!”

“Hey, keep it down, there might still be—”

Miki leans all the way over, hands on either side of Sasagawa’s head, and glares harder than he’s ever glared at anything in his life.

**[WAKE UP!]**

“C’mon—”

**[WAKE UP!] [WAKE UP!] [WAKE UP!]**

“Kid—”

“ _Please,”_ Miki wails.

He feels the heat under him before he sees it, not with his nervous system, but with something more primal, and it’s yellow like lanternlight in the black of a moonless night.

Adrenalin runs wild in his heart next to something dangerously like hope. He looks up to see Ben turned away, to stare at a man with long blond hair and a staff that looks like a cross. It’s an odd sight, and a threatening one. He looks back down at Sasagawa and grabs him by the lapels. He screams like he can regurgitate his power from his mouth as well as his eyes, an absolute command.

_**[WAKE UP!]** _

 

* * *

 

Kyouko is in the middle of a science class taught by an exhausted Nezu, who doesn’t know the material all that well but has reviewed the textbook enough for it to not matter, and is mostly ruminating on how he feels like he’s failed every opportunity he’s been given. Nezu is a very sad man.

Then her senses _scream._

Kyouko topples from her desk, clutching the side of her head, which suddenly feels like it’s been split open. She curls up into a ball as shockwaves of pain hit her like she’s being pelted with rocks, on her arms, on her legs, dragging over her elbows, all the while her head throbs with the most horrible pain she’s ever felt in her entire life.

She feels hot all at once, the same sort of heat she remembers when she met Gokudera’s vice president, the strange dissonance of _‘I like this person’_ over _‘I like this person’,_ thoughts aligning oddly, intensity unbalanced. She felt like she didn’t know him at all, which is a feeling she isn’t at all familiar with, and the more she tried to draw out an impression that harder it got to pin him down.

Here there’s no person, but it’s very hot. Sweat beads on her aching forehead and trickles down her chest, everything an ache and a blaze all at once, and she doesn’t know why.

Kyouko finds that _not knowing why_ is somehow unfamiliar too.

“ _Sasagawa-san!”_

“ _Kyouko-chan!”_

“ _Kyouko-chan, are you okay?”_

“ _Kyouko-san?”_

Kyouko writhes on the cold ground, feeling like she’s on fire, feeling like she is fire, and then everything is bright and shining and clear. She knows exactly what is happening to her.

A single tear trickles down her cheek, followed by another, and another, until it’s a deluge.

“…O…Onii-san…”

This pain is her brother’s.

Something horrible is happening to him.

Something _wonderful_ is happening to him.

(Maybe the vacation was a bad idea after all.)

 

* * *

 

Everything is cold in Takeshi’s mind.

His fingers feel numb, and he can’t even feel the circle around his wrist anymore. It’s very dark, in a relaxing sort of way.

In the shadows of his mind, people looked at him with doubtful eyes as he smiled and greeted everyone into the funeral, like he was told to do, and he didn’t realize what he was doing was strange until his dad looked at him with pained eyes and he _regretted_

The cold bites.

_Do I have to? Why?_

He sat in the hospital room all by himself, probably because his dad thought he needed time alone, and that wasn’t what he needed at all, and his cast seemed like a chain keeping him from the only thing he could focus on. Takeshi was grimly aware of how few hobbies he had. He remembered a thought he had when he had gotten angry with himself and his teammates, ‘I bet if I stood on the roof they’d suddenly be all ears’, a thought that had spiraled into a colourful fantasy for hours, and then days, long after the anger faded, sparking over his thoughts with a poetic feeling he could never put words to, because he’s a bit bad at putting words to much of anything. He was in pain and a bit drugged but he thought he’d go up to the roof anyway and see if maybe there’d be anyone out at that hour to see him and say—

_Is it that important? Why?_

Takeshi’s vision swims, even in an abyss. He can’t remember if there’s even anything visible here to begin with, can’t quite tell how his vision is swimming.

_Why would he bother? What was he looking for? What did he want to hear?_

He can hear crying, and he’d like to think that’s all his fault. Proof he’s not supposed to be here.

Not supposed to be…

More and more of his body goes numb. He can’t taste the blue anymore.

He’s seven again, saying that he’s not all that into baseball. He wanted to be a fisherman, real bad, to catch food for his dad to cook. He was very good at it. He’s always been good at everything he put his mind to. He’s always been so good that the moment he fails, he’s failed his own existence.

Yamamoto Takeshi, child prodigy?

No.

Yamamoto Takeshi, baseball ace?

No.

Yamamoto Takeshi,

Yamamoto Takeshi,

And he can’t think of anything else, and yes, that’s right, that’s all there was, and he was stupid to forget how little he mattered—

_Why?_

The crying, somehow, gets louder.

He has to backtrack to answer the question, and finds that he can’t.

_Why?_

Takeshi can’t taste blue, but the blue is in the void around him.

_Why is it important that he has to remember what he’s even asking? Isn’t this fine?_

Sensation tingles in his nerves, all except the space around his wrist, and he realizes he’s not floating in the void, he’s in the bog water just outside the lake hidden on Namimori mountain, left over from a heavy rainfall. He can’t move, but he can hear his mom’s laughter. It’s not bell-like; it’s harsh and wheezing and somehow the most beautiful sound any human being could ever make.

It makes him happy.

 _He regrets_ that he can’t hear it anymore.

The scene decays around him. He tries to breathe, and it’s wet and somewhat tangy with copper, again.

It’s a girl, crying.

_Why did he forget how little he mattered in the first place?_

He remembers, stronger this time, his dad wrapping his arms around him after the funeral and saying that they’re going to be fine, and Takeshi has always been spectacularly awful at stuff like sadness, but he loved his dad, and that was enough to wrap his arms around his dad and repeat the sentiment right back. He held onto him tight, because even that young, Takeshi knew that _**he was all that was holding his dad together—**_

Everything sparks.

Not the dark, infinite cobalt blue of an ocean, the bright, happy blue of the Caribbean, cradled in the reef, secure, and it only shines brighter.

_Takeshi sat awkwardly on his new girlfriend’s bed, and he was just twelve years old and so was she, so neither of them were really sure what they should do, but her mom served them apple slices and it seemed like a good place to start. Their toes nudged each other under the table. Takeshi didn’t really think she was anything special. He wondered if it was something that sort of developed as you grew closer to someone, like—_

— _She ended up breaking up with him in an awkward, stilted conversation, and he could tell she was terrified, but he didn’t really care, beyond disappointment it didn’t work out. He turned down a few confessions after that, and the rumours that he was heartless kind of stung, but it’s not like he can turn it off, heck, neither can—_

— _He sat on the roof and he waited for someone to magically appear and tell him that he mattered, and then—_

Takeshi’s wrist doesn’t feel like it’s freezing.

It feels like it’s on _fire._

“ _ **If you try to hide how sad you are,”**_

And when was the last time he felt sad? Has he ever, for one moment in his entire existence, truly felt sad about anything?

“ _ **I’ll push you off this roof myself.”**_

Has Tsuna?

_There’s something horrible about Tsuna that made Takeshi uncomfortable, and he thinks that maybe he hated him a little, for no real reason at all, but for every reason at once. Tsuna didn’t seem like a real person, he seemed like a filthy smear on humanity, some dark smudge on spotless paper, blank and empty, so cold that everyone just knew it was alright to treat him like trash._

_Right._

_Takeshi hated Sawada Tsunayoshi._

_Takeshi was disgusted by Sawada Tsunayoshi._

_Takeshi hated how little Sawada Tsunayoshi mattered._

_Because he was exactly like Takeshi._

It’s not crushing anymore, it’s flowing around him, softly, like a passing embrace, and everything crystallizes, with the crying so loud it’s almost deafening. Something itches inside him, like the urge to turn around when someone is calling for you.

“ _ **If you try to hide how sad you are,”**_

And Takeshi remembers it in clear images, not just impressions. It was okay to project all your insecurities onto Tsuna. He was a template that reflected everything unlikeable about a person in one package. Look at you. You’re pathetic. Look at you. You’re too weak for sports, you can’t talk properly. Your hair is gross, you’re too cold, your grades are awful, you’re a burden, _look, look, look_.

_Look at you, Yamamoto. You can’t feel a thing. You’re hardly a person at all._

He hated having that. _Look at him, he lets people know how little of a person he is, and they hate him for it. Are you stupid? Do something. Do something, please. It’s not normal to not feel._ _ **Do something.**_ _What’s_ _ **wrong**_ _with you?_

“ _ **I’ll push you off this roof myself.”**_

Takeshi would let him.

Takeshi has never felt sad for a single moment in his life, he couldn’t even be bothered to feel sad about his own mother’s funeral, he couldn’t even bother to feel sad about how hard his father was struggling, he couldn’t even bother to feel sad someone died, he couldn’t even bother to feel sad with every stinging rejection, and then Tsuna opened like a flower and suddenly everything hurt all at once.

It always hurt.

He’s not sure what being sad is, but he does know that in every single one of those situations, he felt _pained_ , and he couldn’t put words to it, because he’s always been bad at stuff like that, but he has his dad’s words full of elaborate metaphors and his mom’s words full of wisdom and Tsuna’s words that are curt and somehow perfect.

Nothing is wrong with him. There was never anything wrong with him. Tsuna can get torn open, and he can get torn open by someone like _Takeshi_.

Tsuna probably doesn’t even like him that much.

Tsuna probably doesn’t even like baseball.

But to Tsuna, none of that matters, because _Takeshi matters._

Because Takeshi matters enough to pay attention to, at least. The same way he pays attention to Hana, the same way he looks at Sasagawa Kyouko like she’s every good thing a human could possibly be. He pays attention because he cares. He pays attention because even if Takeshi isn’t likeable and even if there’s no baseball, there’s something to care about in Takeshi.

There was nothing wrong with Takeshi.

There are things only Takeshi can do. There is nothing wrong with him.

Takeshi is more certain of what he’s looking at; strange patterns, grey washed out by the pure white light. He’s more aware of how damp the side of his head is.

He recognizes the crying now.

Hana’s voice, scratchy and wailing, overlaying the soft, trembling insistence of Tsuna’s voice.

“ _Please don’t die.”_

Because he remembers the gun aimed at his head and the sound of it going off, and he’s not a smart guy, but he knows that’s probably why Hana is crying right now. Tsuna’s voice is an unstable mantra, and he’s being pretty damn clear.

The pain isn’t frustrating anymore, it’s motivating. It’s the most basic framework of any Good Person to not want other people to be in pain. And by listening to Tsuna, by doing what he asks for, that pain goes away. Tsuna and Hana aren’t in pain anymore. Everyone’s having a good time. Takeshi saves the day. Pretty simple stuff. Not sure why he struggled with that.

If Tsuna tried to push Takeshi off a roof, Takeshi would let him.

_And if Tsuna tells him not to die?_

He tastes blue, and he feels like pure, brilliant fire.

 

* * *

 

The ruins light up.

Tsuna looks around as the carvings fill in with the strange almost-water glow, and he’s never seen anything like it.

“It’s happening again,” Hana whispers.

Tsuna’s grip on Takeshi’s wrist loosens. He looks back down.

The spot underneath where he had been gripping is glowing blue just under the skin.

“Takeshi,” Tsuna whispers.

“ _It’s working,”_ Gi U grins.

 

* * *

 

Miki shakes Sasagawa, screams the command over and over again.

Sasagawa is glowing gold, just under the skin, and his injuries are all burning. Possibly in a good way. Miki isn’t totally sure.

“A Flame user? Here?” The man with the cross staff hisses.

“I don’t know about flames, but I’m very, very magic,” Miki says shakily. “And I come from a long line of criminals who are also very, very magic, so I suggest you don’t take a single step closer.”

“Don’t fuck with the kid, he’s like, twelve,” Ben says, gun raised.

Miki bites his tongue to keep from correcting him.

They stare each other down, and Miki prays, he prays, he prays to his ancestors and every spirit that may be listening, _please let this work_.

Underneath him, Sasagawa stirs.

 _ **[WAKE UP!]**_ Miki screams, and it doesn’t even seem like real words anymore, but it does the trick.

Sasagawa climbs unsteadily to his feet.

Then he tips over onto a tree and vomits loudly.

“Brain trauma,” Ben kindly reminds them.

“Ighmm okkkayyy,” Sasagawa slurs. He spits out a little vomit and adds “to…to the extreme.”

Miki stands up straight and glares at the strange new man who wants them dead.

He’s tired of being used and being weak and being pathetic and being worthless. He’s tired of the world being scary.

“Leave us alone.”

“You’re both Saint Affinities,” the man says speculatively. “I believe Zeni called you ‘Sun’ types?”

It’s an apt word for it. The feeling washing over Miki feels like the sun’s rays spreading outwards, the feeling he gets when he looks at Sasagawa is like the glaring, unrelenting brightness of a noon sun. It’s a really good word for what they are.

A great big ball of deadly flames.

Sasagawa steps forward. His bruises aren’t on fire anymore; they’re still there, but kind of pink-grey. The only one still on fire is the one on his forehead. He looks down at Miki curiously, and then up at Ben, who looks a little startled at all the sudden magic powers, and then finally, up at the man with the cross staff.

He seems to come to a decision.

“I don’t know who you are, but I’m going to have to fight you. I have to find that guy that attacked me and get Sawada back! TO THE EXTREME!”

 

* * *

 

Gi U staggers back, and it’s only at that moment he seems to realize that he’s alone in the room with the three of them. He looks down the hall, and irritation flashes over his face when he sees the men parked on the other side. He must have thought they had ran off.

Tsuna distinctly remembers them vanishing into thin air, though.

Takeshi sits up. He looks very, very calm, and his forehead is very, very on fire. Tsuna really hopes that lazily streaming smokey blue flame is the same stuff that’s filling up the whole ruin.

Takeshi glances over to Hana, and grins sheepishly. “Sorry! Kinda messed up. I guess even kids can be ruthless criminals. That’s really kind of horrible.”

Gi U blinks. “This…isn’t supposed to happen…?”

“Oh, really? I mean, I’m glad it did, I was feeling really bad, but I pulled myself together. Kinda? Not sure what I’m doing next. What am I doing next?” He looks around, and his eyes catch on the bag. “Oh, right, haha.”

He breaks the whip around his arms like it’s wet tissue paper.

Gi U pales. He scratches white fingers against his face, and Tsuna is quietly alarmed when tiny little threads tear off his skin, like they had been growing there.

“Hurting other people is bad, I think that’s simple enough get, right?” Takeshi stares at Gi U, who is looking steadily more panicked.

“I-I—”

“So, yeah, that other guy. Zeni? Zeni, right. Killed someone in cold blood, ordered a lot of people dead. He hurt you. You’re just a kid, he shouldn’t have done that. So…” Takeshi walks over to his bag.

And pulls out a sword.

The blue blaze on his forehead is casting eerie and severe shadows over his face when he turns, and the smile is ever-present. It’s not much different than his usual smile, but it looks like how barbed wire feels.

“It’d be cool if I killed him, right guys?”

“Go for it,” says Tsuna.

Hana gives him a weak thumbs-up.

And then all hell breaks loose.

 


	18. The Willpower of the Violent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayy
> 
> I've been super busy recently, and not in the mood for prose, but AT LAST, ANOTHER CHAPTER. 
> 
> It was actually super hard to get back on the wagon for these plotlines. It's all so busy! Dang! Hopefully all the battles will resolve by the next chapter. In the meantime, SUPER DENSE FLAME LORE + even more murder and child abuse. What an unhappy story arc
> 
>  **Warnings:** Gaslighting of a minor, death

Naoki takes his newest recruit down the halls. The teenager is quiet, obedient, but sullen.

“You should be happy,” he says conversationally. The wooden floors creak under their feet, barely noticeable, but enough to hear the way the teenager flinches, presses his weight down at the sound of Naoki’s voice. “We’re quite special, among the leagues of organized crime.”

“…Yeah? How’s that?” The boy asks.

Naoki presses a hand to his back, frowns at the way the boy shivers involuntarily, and pushes him into the room.

Seven colours, seven tapestries lit bright. The teen looks around in confusion, brow furrowed, and mouth pulled down. The ritualistic atmosphere of the room must seem confusing to the boy, who only knew them by crime, guardianship and notoriety. The closest thing to fanatical they have is Kunihiro, who took to converting for organized crime like he was converting for a cult, but that has long since been obvious as nothing more than a habit of personality.

Kunihiro has left more clawmarks over more surfaces than any emotionally stable human ever could. He likely doesn’t know how to love something any other way.

The teen, _Fukuzawa Udo_ , shares none of Kunihiro’s blind worship. He’s very hesitant, uncomfortable, confused and wary of any explanation Naoki may provide. It’s simultaneously both a relief and annoyance.

“Those in power draw power to themselves,” Naoki continues smoothly. “And the true power of this world has been in our family for generations.”

Fukuzawa finally speaks up. “What kind of power?”

“Energy. You might call it something like magic. We call it Aura. The kindling to the fire that burns through the planet itself.”

Naoki gestures to the blue tapestry.

“The slow, languid blue that soothes and washes away everything. The _**Sage’s Aura**_ , that we call the _**Rain**_.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

Everything appears in sharp relief, for Takeshi.

He always knew he was a little more observant than most; he’s gotten a few comments about it. Information just sticks to his brain, and is discarded just as easily. Most of the time it’s considered equally, so he’ll forget stuff that was actually important, but the fact he even noticed any of it to begin with was always so weird to the people around him. Random facts, always sticking, vivid and distinct no matter how totally banal they end up being.

Everything appears in sharp relief, especially with Tsuna.

Because Takeshi _doesn’t_ notice, he _doesn’t_ pick up small things, and he feels like his eyes have to crawl over every inch of him to read the twitches and the slightly crooked almost-expressions. And suddenly everything is the most important fact, and his head is crammed with all this useless information that doesn’t really form any sort of cohesive picture.

Everything appears in sharp relief, and the only thing he can do is make it worse. Make it _better._

 _Better._ The exact way the pitcher moves his arm. The exact way the ball leaves his hand. _Better._ The exact distance to the target. The exact amount of pressure to make it too hard, to make hands cramp under the strain, to make them flinch away from the ball. Like an instinctive attack. Pinpoint clarity.

Poorly sorted jumbles, attention-consuming maelstroms, coldly measured information, all in a focus he’s never needed.

Takeshi is not focused right now.

Everything is a smooth, somehow gentle blur, tinted blue from the glowing magic carvings on the wall. He’s never felt so relaxed. He doesn’t feel like laughing at all, and somehow, it feels pretty alright. Everything has an ethereal, dreamlike quality to it, thick like the comfort of drowsiness when waking in a warm, fluffy comforter, cool like an air conditioner against sweaty skin.

Man, he’s going to just kill the _hell_ out of that blond guy.

The kid steps in his path, seething. Takeshi ignores him. Two guys running in. Do they have guns? Are they going to hurt his friends? That’s not allowed to happen.

“You can’t,” the kid rasps. “You can’t kill him.”

“Beating up kids is wrong,” Takeshi carefully explains.

The boy’s face screws up like he’s been struck, and he raises his arms up. The fabric moves as something snakes over his arms. “It doesn’t matter what he does to me. You can’t kill him!”

Takeshi blinks and shifts from foot to foot lazily. How’s he going to get rid of the two dudes over there with this kid in the way? He doesn’t want to hurt him. _Hmm._ He’s not much of a thinker, but he still wants to plunge on forward.

“Why not?”

“He promised…” The kid wheezes, and two fat blue cords flop out of his sleeves. “He promised he’d give me everything. Everything I am. He promised!”

“You don’t honestly believe he’d keep up his end, do you?”

Wrroooooong thing to say.

Takeshi notices the way the kid’s face twists before he feels the air vibrate with the weight of the cords swinging at him. He ducks, and slashes at one with his sword, but it’s too dense, and the blade just strains against it. He decides not to try that again without the right amount of tension.

The boy narrows his vivid purple eyes and drags an arm through the air. Another cord shoots out. If Takeshi didn’t know better, he’d think they were coming from his body.

Then he remembers the thin lines the kid was scraping off his face. Wow, _oh shit!_

The two other guys finally make it over, and Takeshi takes a moment to think of the perfect technique to get around the tiny cord-sprouting criminal. He sheathes his sword, takes a step back, and shakes it gently to test the looseness.

They stand right behind the boy, and Takeshi’s arm shoots out. The sword only stops right before the kid — and he can see everyone assuming that’s where it’s going to stay — but the loosened sheath goes flying forward, straight into the left guy’s face, easily breaking his nose. The other one shoves past Gi U, and Takeshi snaps the sheath back, flicks it out again, and uses it to choke the man while the blade is still half inside. He slams him to the ground and uses his foot to tilt his head so the blade hovers over a major artery.

“Ooohh my god,” says Hana.

Tsuna smiles with a fond sort of blandness, like Takeshi has done something ultimately unsurprising, but also very pleasant. It’s a weird look on Tsuna, and Takeshi has the uncomfortable revelation that he’s seen that exact expression on Hibari on more than one occasion.

Takeshi picks up one of the cords with his toes and uses it to tie up the two guys threatening his friends. He peeks over his shoulder to check in on the kid, who seems perfectly content to let Takeshi maul his crew as long as he isn’t going to run off and kill the most monstrous piece of human filth on the planet.

He’s not having a good time of it, though. He’s sweating now, and a thick clump of skin-coloured cord falls from his face. Takeshi winces. That doesn’t look good, or healthy.

“You alright?”

“I’m…fine! You’re not allowed to…” He stumbles, and Takeshi catches him with one arm. The kid reels back with a hiss, like Takeshi’s skin is a hot skillet.

“I have to. I’m sorry, kid.”

“You’re NOT ALLOWED!”

His cloak tears apart, and cords — both flesh-coloured and not — burst forth, surging towards Takeshi. He guides them with the sword, and uses the fact they can’t be cut to his advantage, pushing them away from Hana and Tsuna.

He turns to both of them.

“Run.”

And then the cords catch around him, and Takeshi is slammed into — and _through_ — the stone floor.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Naoki’s hand traces over the soft fabric of the white tapestry shimmering shades of indigo and violet.

“The only power not limited to those who know about the system. Illusionists have mastered it long before we had even established one. The _**Mystic’s Aura**_ , that we call the _**Mist**_.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

They’re beginning to have flashbacks.

Not visual. Sensory. Burning in their veins, itching their skin. They recognize the sensation, recognize the aching blaze, like fire mixed with brambles. Acid. Panic begins to choke them, but their illusions hold strong. The woman still curled up on the couch has yet to waver in the town-wide Shroud, but the boy’s illusions are beginning to get inconsistent.

“Is that all you got?” Echoes through his senses. “IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?”

It _is,_ but he doesn’t have to know that.

The boy sends his vision and his visage downstairs, where the redhead is scorching through each of his illusions with his strange fire. Countless beasts and soldiers are torn through with the sheer power of the magic in his hands.

The boy raises his hand, and a pillar of his own flame is sent flying at him.

It passes harmlessly through the man.

The boy steps back when the man tilts his head up and makes direct eye contact. The boy is still upstairs in his room, but it sends a shock of fear through him anyway.

_Fear._

He could _destroy_ him if they just released the Shroud.

If he just released the Shroud…

“It’s been a long time since illusions bothered me, _**boy**_.”

The false image collapses, and up in their room, the boy pulls out a gleaming white pistol.

 

* * *

 

The next tapestry is thick, coarse, purple fabric.

“Boundless, and rarer for it. The limitless reproductive power of the _**Emperor’s Aura**_ , what we call the _**Cloud**_.”

 

* * *

 

Gi U lets out a scream of rage and throws the blue swordsman straight through the floor.

He ignores the other two, because they’re weak and Zeni will kill them.

The swordsman slides down a shattered slab of stone and falls down into the abyss. Gi U follows, still screaming. The blue fire _aches_ , sending ripples of instability through his skin, muscle, bones. Like his whole body was harmonics and the blue is an off-key sound ruining the whole of it. The more his cords bind, the more unstable he feels.

But he can work around it. Gi U grits his teeth, twists in the air, and uses his cords to grab debris to chuck at the teenager. A flash of metal, and the debris is deflected. Poorly. Katana are made out of garbage metal and have delicate edges; they’re made for slicing, not striking. A huge chip of the blade goes flying, nearly nicking Gi U in the ear.

It’s darker the farther they fall, dark, dark, and then black, the only light coming from the blaze on the swordsman’s forehead.

“You _can’t_ ,” Gi U wails, “you can’t get rid of him yet!”

The blue swordsman smiles and tilts his head.

“So what about later?”

It’s so hard to think. A blurry, drowsy, heavy feeling spreading through Gi U’s limbs, like the numbness of blood loss without the looming threat of pins and needles. He’s already lost half his body weight, now, and if he keeps producing cords he won’t survive without a hospital, or Anemone.

But he hasn’t seen Anemone in years. Anemone is dead.

Gi U collapses — as much as someone can collapse in mid-air — and the teen grabs him by the collar just before they hit the ground.

  
  


* * *

 

 

“You really believe in all this spooky magic stuff?” Fukuzawa asks.

Naoki smiles mildly, and ignores him. He slides a hand over the next tapestry, a blazing red. It used to be something that inspired him. The same deep, praeternatural sort of red as the Kouyou family’s hair colour. He stopped liking it around the same time Kunihiro figured out how to use it.

“A destructive maelstrom, protective in its violence. The _**Warrior’s Aura**_ , that which we call the _**Storm**_.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

Hayato is starting to wonder if he’s just inexplicably attractive to useless nerds.

Or at least, nerds that are only useful in one specific context. Miki, for example, is only useful for speechwriting and composing new lesson plans. This mousy little Irie guy seems to be useful only in the operations of firearms, and Hayato doesn’t have any guns, so, generally useless.

“What if they’re dead,” Irie says, because his primary character trait seems to be anxiety. Not even the anxiety Hayato can use, like Miki’s trembling, frail, broken bird anxiety. Annoying whiner anxiety. ‘Boy, this sure feels like a bad idea’ anxiety. _Useless asshole_ anxiety.

“They’re not dead.”

“But it’s been an _hour._ ”

“I know it’s been an hour, but they’re not dead.”

It’s been an hour because forests are flammable and there’s a bunch of men with lethal weaponry surrounding that pool of collapsed churches Hayato has already forgot the name of, and he doesn’t have any guns or explosives that won’t set the forest on fire because he used them all during the raid on their camp, and no matter how much they circle the area there isn’t a single damn clearing in sight. Hayato is tempted to risk it, but Irie keeps needling him, the annoying little twerp.

But there’s Sasagawa, who is very punchy, and Yamamoto, who is very…Hayato isn’t sure. _Intense_. Raised by an ex-hitman, maybe? There’s been a smattering of clues, first of all the name ‘Yamamoto’ being on Tsuna’s file as one of the people on detail, but he can’t really be 100% sure.

Kurokawa is an annoying teenage civilian, but also razor-sharp and good with intelligence, and Tsuna has practical wisdom where book smarts fail.

So they’re not dead.

(Well, Kurokawa is probably dead, but who gives a shit about her, honestly.)

“I need a gun,” Hayato says for the eighth time in the past ten minutes, and it’s no less true this time around.

“If you want one that bad, can’t you just knock a guy out and take his?” Irie snaps.

“I don’t…” Hayato doesn’t _do_ close-combat, both out of a lack of practice and a fear he’s going to kill a guy and it’ll be like his first kill all over again, the nausea and the bright sunlight and the gore splattered all over the ground. He’s not reliving that if he can just…

Hayato frowns at Irie. Well, he’s going to have to charge guys who are using lethal weaponry when they get down to the basin. The only difference is that he’ll be able to use bombs then. It’s better to get his heeby-jeebies over with.

“…Okay. I’m gonna do it.”

Irie flinches. “You’re _what_?”

“I’m going to take a guy’s gun. Distract them.”

“With _what?”_

“Don’t you have anything on you?”

“No, I just…wandered after you?” Irie clutches his stomach and buries his head into his lap. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“Throw one of those fancy rings or something.”

Irie snaps his head up, looking furious. “No! I was given these rings to _protect_ them!”

Hayato rolls his eyes. “Well you’re going to get them _back,_ obviously.”

“It doesn’t matter! They’re not some cheap bauble to toss around like that!”

“Then use your tender flesh! It doesn’t matter! Just distract them.”

Irie snarls again, but picks up a wayward brick and follows Hayato back to the nearest set of men in suits. There’s three of them, the smallest parcel he’s seen so far, and Hayato isn’t sure he can take three guys with lethal weapons, but…

He nods at Irie. Irie tosses the brick as far as he can. It hits a tree with a satisfying _**thok**_ , and two of the men wander in closer to investigate. Not a good distraction, but whatever.

Hayato circles them, closing in on the one left behind. To his surprise, there’s the sound of something pushing through the brush, luring the two even farther away. That’s risky. Hayato picks up the pace, not really bothering with being too stealthy.

He sidesteps closer, waits until his target focuses on where the men are following Irie’s noises, and then strikes.

Or rather, tackles.

Hayato wraps his arms around the man’s neck, and the man tries to aim his gun at him, but it’s awkward — a bite to the ear and a sideswipe gets rid of the weapon. He shoves his weight up, unbalancing the man, and puts all of his effort into making sure he lands on his head. He doesn’t, so Hayato uses the man’s recovery time to go after the gun. A hand wraps around his ankle, and a spike of fear goes up his spine, up until he gets the gun, turns around, and shoots without a second thought.

His blood runs cold as the sound rings out through the forest, definitely catching attention, but all he can see is the bullet hole in the man’s forehead, the blood splatter over his trouser leg, and the way a bit sprayed out the back of the man’s head as the bullet escaped through the exit wound. The body slumps, and Hayato stares, wide-eyed, at the smear of red through blond hair.

Then he doesn’t have time to consider it, because there are men shouting. He steels himself, reminds himself that this isn’t the first — isn’t even the _tenth_ — person he’s murdered, and takes off through the new opening he’s created.

He thinks Irie’s gone, but no, Hayato can see him a few metres away, exploding through the brush just like he is. He must have used the sound of the gunshot to break through. The men are going to head back to their original position first, where they’ll find the body, and probably split up, so Hayato should—

He doesn’t get to complete his planning, because right before his eyes, Irie is clotheslined by a man in a trenchcoat and hits the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Hayato freezes. The trenchcoat man raises himself to his full height, and he’s tall, _god he’s tall_ , with a nefarious-looking goatee and slicked-back hair in a braid. The man smirks devilishly at Hayato, then down at Irie.

Hayato doesn’t think, just aims and fires. He gets the target right, but the man in the trenchcoat dodges easily, like it’s nothing. Hayato shoots again, hyperaware of how much attention he must be drawing, but he still misses.

“That’s why we don’t trust our jobs to children,” the man says snidely.

Hayato sees red.

Literally. Sees red.

It’s like he’s igniting, like he had been in the middle of a pile of kindling and dry grass and dropped a match. Everything _oozes_ red, setting an odd tint to the world.

“’Aint that neat,” says Goatee. “Not as impressive as mine, though.”

The man flicks his arms out, and two blades drop into his hands — knuckleduster knives — and they ignite into red _fire_. Sort of. It _looks_ like fire, but it’s not ignited in flames, but in little tongues, each pronged and edged like a painting. The heart of the flame is deep, blood red, almost too dark to give off light, and it tapers off into glowing blood orange. It’s unnatural, beautiful, and hauntingly familiar.

“What the fuck,” Hayato spits, and it tastes like woodsmoke and ash.

“The blessing of the Warrior,” the man jeers. Hayato is vaguely aware that he’s now surrounded by men in suits, but it’s not really sinking in. “Zeni, oh Zeni, he’s found a whole new world buried in old dig sites and ancient temples. Power unlike anything you’ve ever heard of. Shit’s _magic._ ”

He raises his arm and drives it into a tree. It crumples, simultaneously decaying and turning into ash. It’s like the not-fire is crushing it, rather than just burning.

“He collected the best of the best. He collected us folks with _power_.” He raises his arm again.

Hayato doesn’t see a target, until he realizes Irie is still on the ground.

Irie is at least smart enough to roll out of the way, but he’s treated with a kick to the stomach for his trouble. Hayato raises the gun, but countless men in suits raise their own in turn. He’s struck with how terribly powerless he feels.

“You’ve got power, don’t you?” Goatee smiles thinly at Hayato, almost pityingly. The sight of it prickles. “Zeni would like you. I can see it, your flames reaching out without anything to ignite it. You could be so _strong._ ”

A fantasy comes unbidden, of Tsuna moving his loyalties over to Zeni, controlling them from the inside. It feels so simple. It involves Hayato and Tsuna not dying.

Irie sits up, looking fearfully from Goatee to Hayato. There’s more haze around his necklace and ring, each coloured to the gem.

“What _is_ that?” Hayato says out loud.

Goatee looks down at Irie and frowns. “Well, that’s odd, isn’t it?”

Irie shrinks back and scuttles back into a tree, eyes wide and fearful, glasses skewed. Hayato feels like he has to do something, but he’s not sure he wants to agree to joining up with some guy who’s been attacking his own without Tsuna’s explicit permission.

“Don’t touch,” Irie chokes, wrapping his ringed hand around the necklace.

“Y’know, I think that’s the exact sort of thing Zeni’s interested in,” Goatee says conversationally, stepping closer to Irie. “That’s all he cares about, if I’m going to be honest. Nothing but Aura baubles.”

“Don’t touch,” Irie repeats, high and panicked. “She gave them to me, you can’t, you can’t touch them!”

“Just a look.”

And then Irie’s other hand whips out of his pocket, and his thumb slams down on _something_ , and suddenly Hayato is hit with a wave of brilliant _yellow_ , pure buzzing energy that rings through his teeth, knocking him back. He can the feel the red haze _eat_ at it, somehow, like an animal devouring prey.

The air glitters.

Hayato’s ears ring.

The yellow glow over the atmosphere settles thick on Hayato’s scrapes, making them tingle, but it breaks into harmless-looking cubes before twinkling out entirely. Irie looks blankly at the device in his hand — some sort of shell thing. His ring is still glowing on his hand.

“…Well…Uh…” Irie sits up. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Hayato barks, even though he’s really not. “What was that?”

“It came with the rings,” Irie explains in a rush, “When Umi-san shipped the rings over to me, she gave me, uh, _stuff_ , and this remote thing, I guess — I mean she said I can’t use the rings without help, and the rings are glowing, and he’s talking about Aura like it’s some sort of, uhm, superpower? So I figured it might be...I mean, I don’t think it’s supposed to do that, though. The big EMP explosion. I’m pretty sure that’s new.”

Irie opens his palm to reveal his shell-like ‘remote’ — a small disk with openings around the edges and a big button in the middle. “It did the cube thing when I tried it once, but I’ve, erm, never touched it again.”

“You pit my life on a weapon _you didn’t know how to work_?”

Irie shrugs.

Hayato looks around, at the unconscious men, and tries to let Irie pull him up. It goes well for about five seconds, when Irie’s eyes rolls into the back of his skull and he collapses to the ground.

Hayato gets up by himself and makes a small of disgust at the copper-haired little weed. He can’t believe he was going to risk betraying Tsuna’s trust for this punk-ass—

Goatee gets up.

“Whew. Now _that_ had some punch.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

Fukuzawa is following along now, his eyes locking on the green tapestry before Naoki can get to it. He’s interested now.

“A concentrated _force_ , reinforcing, attracting, and expelling, both a shield and a blade. The _**Smith’s Aura**_ , known to us as the _**Lightning**_.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

Zeni strolls through the streets, admiring the locale as he hadn’t had the chance to since he got here.

This isn’t going well, but it’s not unsalvageable. He’s gotten all the information he needs from the odd rose child, and once he’s taken out and shot like a dog, he’ll happily collect the remains. The saddest, funniest thing about it is that Gi U probably _knows_ he’s being tossed out like an old rag. The boy just moves under the assumption that if he _survives_ , he’ll be rewarded with everything he’s ever wanted.

A bit pathetic.

Zeni can hear the sound of gunshots, the sound of fighting, echoes from the basin and the forest. The shroud above shimmers with instability, reflecting a fight occurring far off in the distance. So much bloodshed. So much danger.

He raises his hand and takes it all in like the swell of an orchestra.

Even with countless dead men cast off like fodder, he has his weapons, and he has his Guardians.

And by the end of this, even if they’re all dead, he’ll come out alive and on top. Electricity crackles on his fingertips like a promise.

No matter how wrong things go, he’ll rise above them all like a _god_.

  
  


* * *

 

Fukuzawa is following him around the room, now, stepping up to the yellow tapestry as Naoki traces his fingers along the wall to meet it. The teen’s eyes flick over the fabric, and the patterns, drinking it in as if he could predict the lore before Naoki could say it.

“The glow of recovery, power that shines brightest on the inside. The _ **Saint’s Aura**_ , known to us as the _**Sun**_.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

Sasagawa roars and gives the staff man a right hook that looks powerful even without connecting.

And it doesn’t connect; it sails right past, and Sasagawa falls into the water.

The staff man laughs, a dark, mocking chuckle. Miki chews on his bottom lip. Ben uses an arm to push Miki behind him, a mostly useless gesture of protection.

Sasagawa explodes out of the water, roaring like an animal, and keeps swinging. There is absolutely zero fire on him now, but his forehead is glowing yellow and looks a bit glittery. Sometimes, when Miki freaks out, glitter is a normal factor, but he’s honestly a little worried Sasagawa’s head might explode.

“What’s happening to him?” Ben asks.

Miki shuffles awkwardly. “I, uhm. Refueled him. With magic.”

“Are you some sort of…what, wizard?”

“Nnnnooo, not really. I used to do this to my mom when she pulls an all-nighter and still has to go into work?” He shuffles awkwardly. “I always thought I was just compelling her to be perky, but I guess I might have, er. Gravely misunderstood what I was doing. She always gets upset when I talk about my ability, and the only other person who’s willing to tell me about it is…”

Uncle Kunihiro may not actually be physically capable of talking about someone skills without upselling it and talking about how useful it would be if they just _joined the yakuza_. Pretty much every conversation Miki ever had with him about it ultimately ended in _‘join the yakuza, we will teach you our ways_ ’. The most Miki got out of it was that the whole sparkly eye magic thing runs in the Kouyou family, which explains _so much_ about Namimori as a concept.

It also explains way more about Uncle Kunihiro and how he treats people than Miki ever wanted to know.

Sasagawa swings two more times, still roaring, still missing. Miki keeps gnawing on his lip. He has to be able to do _something_. Back in Namimori, hiding in his own home, he felt unbelievably powerful, so powerful he had no choice but to hide in shadows and protect people from his very existence, but now he feels so _weak_.

“If I could get a shot in—”

“No,” Miki jerks, “he’s using magic too, you don’t know what it does.”

For now, it seems like it’s making Sasagawa sort of… _slow_. Miki doesn’t notice at first, but over time, the sluggishness in contrast with the abrupt strikes becomes so pronounces that it’s obvious. The blue magic is making Sasagawa’s movements heavy, telegraphed, too slow to deliver.

Miki grunts and looks up at Ben, until Ben looks down at him.

_**[Let me go.]** _

Ben lets Miki slide out from behind him, and doesn’t stop him as he sprints towards the water. When Sasagawa breaks the surface again, Miki skids in across the water-slick stone, turns, and makes direct eye contact with the staff man.

_**[FREEZE!]** _

He stops, only a half-second, but enough for Sasagawa to drive a golden fist straight to the solar plexus. The man staggers, and glares at Miki.

 _ **[DUCK!]**_ Miki spits.

The man almost bows over, but holds himself upright, and the resistance makes another opening for an uppercut.

He gets it, this time, that Miki’s powers comes from his eyes, and he decides to ignore him completely. Miki takes a step back, watching with frustration as Sasagawa is beaten back again. He’s still so _slow_ , from both the blue haze consuming the water and the strange milky stream oozing off the staff.

Fortunately, Miki came here fully equipped.

Sasagawa is beaten, again and again, ruthlessly, with strikes meant to _hurt_ more than knock back. The bars of the cross are being used more, and there’s no way Sasagawa is getting out of this without any cracked or broken ribs. The staff-wielder looks like he’s attempting to meticulously break _everything_ , every bone in Sasagawa’s body, every muscle, every ligament. Miki is nothing to him, and Miki could never imagine a kind man doing something this to a middle-schooler.

So it’s no skin off his back when Miki takes his weighted flashlight and bashes it viciously over the man’s skull.

He drops. Miki daintily tip-toes down the slick stone and kicks the staff into the water, where it sinks into its depths.

“We can get that later,” he says numbly.

Sasagawa gives him a thumbs up, and passes out.

  
  


* * *

 

 

By the time they get to the last tapestry, Fukuzawa is hanging off his every word.

Naoki stops, back to it, regarding Fukuzawa carefully. Fukuzawa devours the eye contact hungrily, like it’s all he’s ever wanted. Acknowledgment. To be seen. To be considered. The desire is all-consuming. In that moment, Naoki feels a pulse of _red_. The boy’s a Storm, then.

Fukuzawa licks his lips. “What’s the last one, then.”

Naoki turns to the orange tapestry.

“The bond. The resonance deep inside all of us. The _heart_. Pure power, without characteristic, without limitation, without colour. It rises like fire without any aura to taint it, and we treat it as if fire is its true self as a result. The _**God’s Aura**_ , that which we call _**Sky**_.”

Naoki turns to look at Fukuzawa. He cups his hands against the boy’s cheeks, and the boy doesn’t struggle, doesn’t even flinch. He’s been completely sucked in.

Awaiting orders.

Naoki’s lips curl up, and his eyes glow orange.

**[You belong to us, now.]**

It’s delightful, watching that command sink in.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Hana’s hand is freezing and clammy, and Tsuna doesn’t think his hand is much better.

He can feel the fight vibrating under their feet, and he doesn’t know what to think anymore. Something about Takeshi seemed so reliable, so immediate, that Tsuna just went along. It’s not as if they can do anything to help.

The lights dim the farther away they head. Hana is still sniffling and swallowing snot, but she’s not crying anymore, which is an improvement. Tsuna is still struggling to shake off the numbness, the mindless smoothness he forced himself to feel.

He’s not giving up. He’s not giving up. _He’s not giving up._

They head towards the exit, but Hana flinches when gunshots echo from outside. Tsuna looks around wildly, and ultimately yanks her into a nearby room, where a door is open.

“That wasn’t there before,” Hana gasps.

Tsuna dives into it, dragging Hana with him. Hana stumbles forward, and Tsuna looks behind them—

Just in time to see the door slam shut. The glowing lines vanish like the flame of a blown-out birthday candle.

Hana shrieks a little at the sound of stone on stone, and Tsuna loses track of her hand. He almost think she’s fallen, but she’s just getting out a glowstick, which must have been in the pockets her swimsuit inexplicably has.

“They took my phone,” she gripes.

“Why do you have glowsticks?” Tsuna asks, accepting the green one she passes him.

“There’s an underwater camera in my bag? And I was going to drop one in and make some really cool-looking pictures. And instead I’m using them because we’re trapped in some magic cave. This is the _worst_.” Hana takes out a blue one and cracks it. She sort of winces at the colour.

“…Takeshi is fine,” Tsuna says after a minute.

“Then why’d the lights go out? Why’d the door close? He’s the one powering the place, isn’t he?”

“Maybe…Maybe he has to concentrate on the fight.” Tsuna isn’t sure. He doesn’t like not being sure. It seemed so easy, back then, when his biggest problem was what to do with the angry assassin sent in to babysit him, but right now it’s making him nothing but anxious.

“What if he’s dead?” Hana whispers.

“He’s not dead,” Tsuna says sharply.

Hana bows her head. The blue light shines on her hair.

Tsuna takes a deep breath and focuses on fighting back the chilling numbness around his soul, tries to think determined, willful thoughts. He powers through the hallway. He can barely see anything, and the darkness ahead seems so foreboding. He tries to keep his tread soft. Hana’s blue light bobs behind him.

The hall opens into a large room. It looks like a dining hall, what with the giant table. Tsuna can barely see it, but the glowsticks aren’t the only light source now; there’s a beam of light far, far out of reach above them. Just one tiny one, but a strong one, enough to cast a stream that illuminates a long wooden table ringed by broken chairs. There’s a huge water stain on the wood directly under the light, and it’s growing healthy seedlings. It must have been here for years.

“We’re probably under that cliff that was overlooking the basin,” Hana says.

“Probably.”

Hana goes over to sit on one of the chairs. She looks around, at the blackness oozing from everywhere that isn’t the weak light over the table, and sprawls herself over it, with her head buried in the crook of her arm. She seems too tired to cry.

Tsuna explores. He can feel vibrations under his feet. It feels like the ruin is falling apart. He wonders what Takeshi is doing, to cause something like that. He wonders if it’s Takeshi at all.

There’s a few adjacent hallways, which Tsuna decides to wander through, since he doesn’t fear death at the moment. He fears normal things, like Hibari, and disappointing Kyouko. Maybe other people dying.

Everything is so quiet, down here. The sound of dripping echoes through, and some spots are damper than others. Everything is cold, so far from the warmth of the sun, the warmth of _anything_. He wonders what this place was for. It almost seems like a base, but the rooms he’s peeking into have doors now, doors he can open, and each of these doors leads to a room that has a distinctly personal touch.

Bedrooms.

People used to _live_ here.

Maybe the person who used to open all the doors with the blue fire died, or maybe they made a better base after all the buildings collapsed into the water. Maybe it _is_ a base, a home away from home, and everyone got out safely, because Tsuna can’t see any skeletons. But it’s still sad, somehow. Lonely.

The hallway feeds back into the dining hall. Tsuna double-checks the openings; four of them, and two are dedicated to that one hallway, leaving only one.

He peeks over his shoulder at Hana. She’s still leaning on the table. She might actually be sleeping.

Tsuna makes his way through the last hall. There’s no rooms, just murals, broken pots, missing artifacts, and so on. Tsuna avoids stepping on pottery shards sprayed over the floor. It’s dry, here, and he can feel the rough stone against the pads of his feet. It feels good, somehow.

The hall seems almost endless, until he reaches a double-door. It looks made of stone, but when he knocks on it, it doesn’t seem dense. He pushes, and while they’re _really_ heavy, they’re also thin, enough for him to get past them.

The room beyond is dark in a more menacing way. More shapes, more shadows. The green light feels sickly against it all. Tsuna feels like he’s intruding. This has to be somewhere important.

That means there’s no exit in this part of the ruin.

He shakes it off, waves the glowstick about. There’s chairs lining the walls, a decrepit cabinet with nothing but fine china inside, and swords hanging off the walls. There’s a Japanese-style table further in, with two cups, and a knocked-over sake bottle that left water damage where the alcohol had spilled however long ago. At the back of the room, there’s nothing but a picture frame containing an old photograph. It looks like it was taken in the 1800s, in sepia, and a bit bleary around the edges.

A lanky figure in a mask and yukata, hands folded politely in his lap, over a blade. Another figure in western dress, brilliant blond, beaming at the camera, seeming to glow with pure energy, despite the severe cut of his face. Like a Greek statue that was just told a hilarious joke. Another darker-haired figure in a tophat and coat, leaning on the beaming blond, smirking coyly at the camera.

Tsuna is again reminded that people used to live here. It still bothers him.

He pockets the picture frame, deciding that the old residents should be have their existence respected in a museum, instead of a secret room in a secret cave.

Tsuna takes a pair of swords from one of the wall displays and starts heading back, watching carefully for pottery shards.

_**THOOM.** _

Tsuna is really starting to hate that noise.

_**THOOM.** _

The whole ruin shakes. He drops the glowstick and sprints down the hall.

_**THOOM.** _

Hana is already upright, staring wide-eyed at the hall they had first come from. She jerks at Tsuna’s arrival, and after a moment of deliberation, grabs her glowstick from the table, runs to the circular hall, and chucks it as far as she can. She’s a better throw than he is. Once she’s sure it lands, she runs back in the direction of the hallway Tsuna had just come from.

“Watch out for the shards on the floor,” Tsuna calls after her.

She sprints anyway, and he follows her, hands white-knuckled around the swords. He wishes he had a better weapon on hand. Tsuna doesn’t really do swords. He knows he’s going to hesitate if it comes down to using them.

_**THOOM.** _

Tsuna leaps over broken pottery.

_**THOOM.** _

He joins Hana in the office, and she shuts the door behind them. He’s not sure if he’s afraid or not. Everything feels cold.

_**THOOM.** _

Hana tosses the glowstick in the cabinet and closes it, bathing them both in nothing but darkness and eigengrau. Tsuna’s vision clouds with half-colours. Hana takes his hand again. It’s still cold, but it’s dry now. He squeezes, and lets himself be pulled to another cabinet, a taller one, and Tsuna feels fabric. A wardrobe. Maybe whoever needed this room needed to change quickly between meetings.

He buries himself inside with Hana. He clutches his sword, and Hana takes her own. She keeps hers unsheathed; Tsuna can tell from the sound of it sliding free, and the sheath clattering at their bare, freezing feet.

“No one’s dead,” Hana whispers, soft and shaky. “We’re going to be okay.”

Their hands aren’t getting any warmer.

“Yeah,” Tsuna says. “We’re going to be fine.”

It’ll probably be harder to hesitate when you can’t see a damn thing.

_**THOOM.** _

They can feel the ruin door collapsing, letting in whoever was pounding against it, and Tsuna lets his sheath drop too.

 


	19. The Willpower Of A Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> STILL GOING BABY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warnings:** Death, explicit eye trauma/gore, depersonalization, dissociation, Yamazaki Kunihiro (but less awful), more hard violence

There were only three of them, when Romolo Zeni first found them.

It’s hard making it as a mafioso in Sicily. Mafia is something you’re raised into, and no one wants to touch Blackmarket street rats, especially the ones with blood on their hands. By the time he was twenty, Marcello resigned himself to the fact he’d never be mafia. By the time he was thirty, he was so good at smuggling that it didn’t matter.

The Blackmarket doesn’t have a definition. It’s just Crime, in the most general of senses. The grime between the cracks. Murder and trafficking and ransoms and gunfights that end in more than just blood and sour feelings.

Marcello wanted more than that.

So when Zeni showed up, looking thoroughly disgusted with their shitty apartment in his immaculate suit, Marcello rose to the bait.

“You really mafia?” He asked.

“An archaeologist, technically,” Zeni had replies. “A collector, mostly.”

He held up a gold medallion and held it out for Marcello to examine. Marcello thought he was just showing off, until it started sparking with green static.

“What the _hell_ —”

“Do you believe in magic?”

Marcello didn’t. But he believed in how much better his life would be with a mafia family, and hell, Zeni was mafia, so he bought into it, and the payoff was _incredible_.

Zeni calls them Flames. It’s like the Aura superstition a lot of criminals buy into, but tangible. Marcello can see it, he can believe it, and he can use it. Zeni gave him weapons; two blades worn like knuckledusters. When Marcello lights them up, they erupt in something more than fire, and he feels _strong,_ for once.

He matched pace. They all did. Marcello did, Ivo did, Nazario did. The three of them — red, yellow, blue — tried their best to match Zeni, absorbed every aspect of him. As if they could absorb what it is to be a part of the mafia, just in case everything didn’t pan out the way they wanted. (It rarely does.) The three of them tried to mirror him the best they could.

The other two didn’t.

Zeni said he hired the other two because of their potential, just like he hired the smuggling trio, but they obviously weren’t looking for a place to call home. They’re just kids, two tiny Asians with something to prove, and clearly not huge fans of Zeni.

The older one, Chrome, he’s all teeth, and he acts like he’s being threatened by everyone who dares interact with him. He’s got a punchable face and a haughty attitude. He’s also the _special_ one. The one Zeni said was _imperative to the operation._

Marcello is pretty sure the younger one’s actually a slave, and not right in the head on top of that. There’s something chilling about seeing a ten-year-old being beat to shit and getting up like nothing happened. He’s one of those conspiracy nuts, too, and Marcello has seen more frantically scribbled notes in Korean than he’s strictly comfortable with.

But Zeni called the five of them G _uardians_. There’s something akin to camaraderie in that. And his outlook may not be mirrored by his fellow men, but Marcello still tries to keep up with Zeni’s mindset, and when he sees new talent, he sees himself. He sees opportunity.

He sees a pale-haired teenager struggling to his feet, throbbing with Storm Flames, and he sees someone he could nurture like Zeni nurtured him.

_Power._

“So as I was saying,” Marcello grunts, shaking off the mild paralysis. His ears are still ringing. “We could use new talent.”

“Fuck no,” the teenager says.

“Well, that’s a pity,” Marcello sighs.

If not a resource, then a threat.

Marcello dives for him, blades at the ready. The teen stumbles backward into a tree, and rolls out of the way. He tries to aim his gun, but his hands are shaking and his posture is god-awful. He fires, missing cleanly, and nearly drops the gun from the kickback.

Marcello keeps pressing him, swipe after swipe. He’s awkward, but _slippery,_ and hard to get a good hang on with the Storm Flames oozing out of his body in irregular pulses. Honestly, what the fuck even _is_ that. It’s not just the kid; Marcello’s own blades are emitting more Flame energy than he’s ever seen before. His arms are engulfed up to his elbows. Something funky is going on here, and it probably has something to do with the thing Zeni wanted to excavate here.

The teenager trips backwards over a body, and Marcello swings down. The little twerp kicks his legs out, though, and nails Marcello in the knee. He wobbles, and the teen keeps kicking until Marcello’s legs slip out from under him and he drops to one knee.

“ _Fuck you,”_ the pale-haired little brat hisses. He kicks again, and Marcello catches him by the ankle.

Then the teenager raises the gun he’d picked back up again when he tripped and fires.

A flash of white-hot pain rips across Marcello’s cheek as the bullet whizzes past. The kid tries to fire again, but all he gets is a click.

Marcello smirks. “All out of options?”

“ _Fuck you!”_ The boy roars, and he throws the gun right at him.

It connects, and pretty heavily; the teen has a great throwing arm. It may have actually cracked his cheekbone. He’ll have to check later. Marcello holds fingers to his cheek to test it, which turns out to be a mistake, because the brat kicks him again, right in the hand with steel-toes shoes, and he can _feel_ his fingers shatter against his face. Marcello lets out a strangled scream. That would have mangled him before he got his Flames, but that doesn’t mean the few broken bones he _did_ get don’t _hurt_.

The teenager kicks up off the ground and flees. Marcello shudders with pain. Well, it looks like he’s only got one hand to work with, now.

He starts resetting them, eying the direction the teenager fled in all the while.

 

* * *

 

 

The forest around him parts, and Hayato breaks into the familiar epic shapes of the basin. He slides to a stop just before the water.

It’s glowing blue, like there’s something radioactive at the bottom, which is concerning.

Twice as concerning is that Sasagawa is battered and broken on the shore, and Miki is arguing with some guy in a suit.

Hayato knows how to deal with this, at least. This is safe. His fist is full of dynamite in half a second, and he’s across the shore in another. He has to use a lighter, and almost fumbles, but he manages to light them all without dropping anything, which is good enough.

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!” Hayato screams.

Miki turns on his heel, looks at him with exhausted, horribly sharp eyes, and says, without a hint of fear, _**[drop it.]**_

The haze around him explodes into the same fire around Goatee’s weapons, and then burns out entirely. The dynamite tumbles from Hayato’s fingers, and he collapses to his knees. Three tumble harmlessly into the water, and one goes off right next to him, making his left ear ring and his arm sting painfully.

It takes him a few stunned seconds to understand what’s happening. Was he just…just _ordered_ to…?

Miki’s mouth quirks down, and his brow furrows. He looks sad and mildly frustrated. After a second of deliberation, he takes his shades from his neckline and puts them back on his face. “…Might need to tone that down, a little.”

“Hey, no, no, it’s fine, magic powers are fine, everybody’s got them. He’s got them, it’s all good,” the suited man says, taking Miki’s wrist and gesturing gently to Hayato.

“I think that’s my fault?” Miki winces.

“So what, you’re a _sharing_ wizard?”

“I told you, I’m not a _wizard_. I mean, I don’t think. I don’t think that’s how it works. I’ve never asked? I mean I have asked, but I’ve mostly asked horrible people who don’t _tell me anything_ —” Miki makes a mildly panicked noise, running his hands through his hair, and Hayato has been nosing into Miki’s business long enough to know he’s tearing up. “I wish they told me things, I wish I could just point at things and explain them to you, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” The man lets go of Miki’s wrist and gives him a comforting pat on the back.

“Who the _fuck_ is this?” Hayato wheezes. “Where’s the Boss? Why’s Sasagawa— is he _dead_?”

“I don’t think so?” Miki makes a face like he’s not actually sure.

“Hey, you must be one of the kids he wanted me to save. My name’s Benedetto. You can call me Ben. I defected.” He steps forward and his arm moves like he’s going to hold it out to shake, but then his attention snaps up. All of a sudden, there’s a gun in his hand, and _**BAM**_.

Hayato freezes, convinced he’s been shot, but after the echoes past and nothing hurts, he opens one eye. Miki is covering his mouth with both hands, and Ben looks like he’s hit his target. Hayato turns to look behind him, and gapes at Goatee, on his knees, clutching his bleeding torso with his bad hand.

“You’re going to have to be more thorough,” Miki whispers, somehow managing to make an entire sentence sound like a wince. “It’s a bit hard, to take down magical folks?”

“How hard are we talking?” Ben asks, also wincing when Goatee starts getting back to his feet, snarling all the way.

“Sasagawa-san broke a three-metre-thick slab of stone with his skull and he seems fine?”

“ _Oh my god.”_

Goatee starts charging, and Ben fires again, this time in the head, but it sort of… _slides off_. It’s only when the bullet hits the stones that Hayato can see why; the bullet is totally _shredded_.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Ben breathes.

“I _told_ you.”

Hayato scrambles out of the way, another fistful of dynamite ready to go. Goatee snarls and raises a fist, and—

Another shot, to the neck, also shredded. Goatee gurgles and drops again, choking and bleeding a little.

“Can I mention I’ve never used lethal weaponry before? I mean, no one uses this stuff, not really,” Ben says, mostly to himself. He speed-walks right past Hayato and stops just short of Goatee, who looks ready to swing.

Hayato lights his fist and flings it.

Ben is knocked back, Goatee screams and tries to slice him. Hayato scrambles back even farther, but Goatee just falls on his face. Ben adjusts his jaw, clearly trying to click out the ringing in his ears, and he keeps walking.

“What are you—” Hayato starts, but the words die on his tongue when Ben grabs Goatee by the hair, tugs his head up, sticks the gun in his eye and—

He at least as the presence of mind to close his eyes, this time.

  
  


* * *

 

Takeshi is aching, and he’s pretty sure he just slowed down time.

Okay, not really, he probably just slowed down his descent enough that he didn’t break anything when he hit the bottom, but still, neat!

The thorn boy doesn’t seem to think so. Takeshi knows this because the thorn boy is still screaming and trying to kill him.

He’s not using any new vines, but he’s getting craftier with the ones he has. The vines are tied to stones, and that makes them both heavy and fast, going hard enough to leave craters in the walls, but they’re really, _really_ slow to start. Takeshi deflects them with the sheath, on the most part, either batting them away like baseballs or redirecting lines by pressing against them.

“I don’t get why I can’t just kill him _later,_ ” Takeshi says mildly.

“YOU _CAN’T!”_ The kid howls, hysterical now. “HE’S MINE HE’S MINE HE’S MINE!”

“You know, I heard abuse victims go back to their abuser because they think horrible things are normal—”

“SHUT UP!”

“—And I want you to know that getting beat up by an adult isn’t normal. It’s bad, and it needs to stop.”

“YOU THINK I CARE?” the kid shrieks, yanking his arm down. Takeshi reaches up to stop the newest onslaught, but it isn’t one line, it’s _two_. The first line jerks against the sword, while the second wraps around his neck, down behind his back, and back up again, around his broken arm. He tries to slow time again, but nope, he’s now in _excruciating pain_.

The little guy tugs the line to pull Takeshi down to the floor. Takeshi’s vision goes white and spotty.

“I don’t care about _any of that_ ,” the kid says hoarsely. “But you’re still coming with me.”

 

* * *

 

Hana’s hand is hot and sweaty.

Tsuna’s eyes are squeezed shut, and he’s hypersensitive to the sounds of footsteps in the distance. He’s also hypersensitive to the weird prickling against his skin that’s been getting progressively worse the longer he’s here; like he’s covered in thousands of suction cups that won’t go away until they get… _something_. Like he’s full of billions of straws trying to drink, drink, drink something that isn’t even there.

He doesn’t want to ask if Hana feels it. He doesn’t want to focus on anything but the blade in his hot, sweaty hand, and Hana’s existence, and the footsteps.

His breath slows when the footsteps get quieter. Exploring the glowstick Hana had tossed. He sucks in air desperately, and tries to steady himself.

“When he comes,” Hana whispers, “we should…we should duck, and then jump him.”

“Just…jab?”

“Yeah.”

“What if there’s more than one?”

Hana is silent.

“…There won’t be.”

“If there is—”

“There won’t be.”

“But if there is, just…run.” Tsuna adjusts his footing. “It’s so dark, they won’t be able to aim.”

“Good idea.”

He can hear her lick her lips.

Waiting this long without distractions makes it harder to ignore his rib. It _hurts._

The footsteps get louder. Back in the dining hall.

There’s a few gunshots, and then booming noises. Familiar booming noises.

“Hayato is here,” Tsuna mumbles. Hana squeezes his hand.

Another gunshot. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Then—

_**KRA-KOOOOOOOM.** _

Tsuna flinches, Hana jumps and shrieks. The world around them shakes violently, even beyond the initial sound, and both of them hit the floor. It takes a few more vibrations before Tsuna understands what he’s feeling.

“I think he just — I think that was a structural collapse.”

“Like the roof.”

“Probably.”

Hana’s breathing is starting to come in quick.

“So he’s strong enough to destroy the roof.”

Tsuna can feel her fingers nervously adjusting, and he focuses even harder on his breathing, if only to sound calm.

“It doesn’t have to be him,” he says, “maybe it’s Hayato.”

“Then _Hayato’s_ going to die,” Hana says all in a panicked, furious rush. “Hayato’s going to die first, and then it’s us.”

“We’re not going to _die_ —”

“ _Yes we are!”_ She sobs. “We’re just kids and these people are all violent killers and we’re going to die and it’s all fucking _Hayato’s_ fault to begin with, so good riddance!”

“It’s not his fault,” Tsuna grits.

“It is! If he never brought his stupid school—”

“ _It’s the yakuza’s fault,_ okay? It’s all their fault for messing with…whatever this is, it’s their fault and now— and now the leader’s dead, so…so just stop blaming people, and keep yourself…just _get ready_ , alright?” Tsuna is choking wetly on his words. He can’t believe he’s ready to cry from just this. He’s had a gun to his head and he got beaten and left to rot in an alley and he’s about to cry from _this_.

“Alright.”

Squeeze.

The foosteps are closer and…and faster, and a shock of ice rocks down Tsuna’s spine when he realizes that _of course_ their conversation could be heard in all this dead air, and now they don’t have a choice.

“Duck and jab,” Tsuna says jerkily.

Hana’s breath catches. She takes a step back.

“ _Duck and jab,”_ Tsuna repeats, fiercer. He’s terrified of the thought of her letting go.

“I can’t,” she wails.

“Hacchan—”

“I _can’t!_ ”

“ _ **FINE!”**_

Tsuna bursts out of the wardrobe, and he’s almost surprised at the pitch darkness of the room. He rips open the cabinet, grabs the glowstick, and tears the door open. The footsteps aren’t as close as he thought, but his nerves are all screaming anyway. He chucks the glowstick, ignoring the wave of pain, and shuts the door behind him.

And then, in comes a thundering, heavy breathing, and a hulking figure that takes up the hallway.

“You think you’re the scariest thing I’ve ever had to fight?” Tsuna asks, terrified and calm all at once.

The huge man and his huge belly and his huge, huge arms stops just short of the glowstick. His eyes flick over Tsuna idly. He doesn’t look impressed.

Tsuna crouches slightly and concentrates on how scared Hana sounded, and how unlikely it is she’ll be able to fight this guy off without freezing up. His grip on his sword tightens.

“I’ve been up against Hibari Kyouya. You’re _nothing_.”

 

* * *

 

Kunihiro stops in the doorway.

On a loveseat sits a woman in a veil, relaxed and oozing power. He can taste something like rainfall and mulch and seasalt on the air, like someone had sucked in the atmosphere of the entire region and stuffed it into one room. Powerful stuff.

Next to her sits a boy, confident, smirking, and young. His hair is longer, with an upward spray at the back that he almost thinks comes from a bun — but no, it’s just pushed up, with a pin, gel, or both.

“Drop the shroud, kiddo,” Kunihiro says kindly.

“Kid, kid, kiddy, kiddo,” the boy remarks idly. “All the adults around here really hate taking us _seriously_ , don’t they.”

He’s sweating.

Kunihiro’s smile twists.

“I take you plenty seriously. You can be a _dangerous_ kid, if you want. I like dangerous.”

“Oh, dear.” The boy’s body language opens up, and his head tilts back. “I see flirting isn’t too far below you, at least.”

It takes Kunihiro a moment to process, because that wasn’t even remotely what he was doing, but then his brain catches up with the rest of him and he’s struck with many memories of other _very cute_ teens opening up their body language to him too. He always forgets.

(This may have something to do with the fact that the only seducing he’s ever done was for business, and he’s done nothing but business since he was in middle school. It may also have to do with the fact draping himself over people is how he says hello. Society’s perceptions of him isn’t really Kunihiro’s problem. When people are attracted to Kunihiro, they do things for Kunihiro, and that’s the _real_ takeaway.)

He laughs. “I’m not coming onto you, promise! Married to my job.”

“And what job is that?”

“Hopefully, having a nice, meaningful conversation with you.” Kunihiro slinks into the room. The boy, to his credit, doesn’t react beyond a slight narrowing of the eyes. Haughty and prideful and broken. Not very cute, Kunihiro has to admit, but trying’s never hurt anyone. He collapses into an armchair.

“On?”

“Zeni. What’s he doing?”

“Stealing,” the boy says, a little less tense now. “He’s an archaeologist. He’s used to lifting from dig sites. The only difference is, he doesn’t put what he finds in museums.”

“And no mafia activity?”

“No mafia activity. He’s not stupid. He brought Blackmarket dregs and armed them. Lethal weaponry.” Kunihiro winces. “I know. Distasteful.”

“Why risk the Vongola?”

“Vongola has an agreement with the Akiyama. Shuffle around a few players, and it’d be like nobody was even here.” The boy’s eyes flick off to the far distance. “Currently, those Blackmarket dregs are sticking to the forest trails. Anyone risking the streets is killing anyone who could identify them.”

“Where are my kids?”

“The students? Meat locker. Most accounted for. What’s happening in the ruin?”

“The ruin.”

“Where the excavation is. I can’t see it; it burns to try.” The boy leans back and puts on an obviously faked look of pompous frustration. The false image is starting to make Kunihiro uncomfortable; he’s not _used_ to Illusionists being bad actors. It’s like meeting a hiker who can’t stand mountains. Every instinct in his body screams that the boy is fooling him somehow, and it’s only years of experience peeling people from their shells that holds him fast and convinces him that an Illusionist _this talented_ is simply _horrifically bad at lying_. Kunihiro can taste the fear, rage, and excitement under the cracking shell of forced casualness. He’s only what, sixteen or so? It’s only natural.

Kunihiro glances towards the woman. “Isn’t _she_ running the Shroud?”

The boy smiles. “Do you want to try killing her?”

“I want my kids out safe. Don’t need to kill anyone to make it happen.”

“Haha. That’s not what you were saying before, was it? You sure do love protecting your… _kids_. Tell me, do you take care of them like this in the yakuza, too?”

“We don’t have anything too awful. We don’t even need fall boys in this area. They’re all safe and cozy. Nothing like the mafia, from what I’ve heard.”

“No. I imagine it wouldn’t be.” The boy folds his legs. One of his hands is hidden in the crook of his jacket. Probably has a gun. Kunihiro is assuming most people don’t make it past his illusions — maybe he’s used to working with a partner. He’s so _bad_ at this.

“Can you drop the Shroud?”

“Not yet. I can’t kill Zeni, and Zeni can tell if the Shroud is up or not. If it’s not, he’ll kill me. Or you. Or whoever.” The boy’s eyes flick a little to the right, where Zeni must be.

“He’s a Flame user.” Kunihiro leans back and hums. “Always a bit of trouble, we are.”

The boy reacts all-to-obviously to the shred of information. “You’ve got a name for it, then?”

“For what?”

“The fire.” He reaches a gloved hand up to his eye and — and he _gores_ it, blood and something else that doesn’t belong inside an eyeball pooling around his fingers and dribbling down his cheek. It’s milky and shimmering, like hand soap. Kunihiro holds his reaction back.

It takes him a few seconds to understand what the goring was for. The boy is pulling a second eyeball out, shredding away the top layer. It doesn’t have an iris, just a translucent film over bright red, and a symbol Kunihiro can’t see in the scattered light.

The rest of the gore catches fire. It’s soft, gentle, thin, and whispy, almost like a natural flame in shape, but somehow _less_. The very ghost of a fire, in whitish-indigo.

Kunihiro’s eyebrows shoot up. He wasn’t actually aware Mist flames were a thing you could _literally manifest_. He always just assumed people include it in the system because Illusionists had to be working off _something_.

“The world is comprised of these auras. Every aspect of life is structured around six energies—”

“Seven.”

The boy’s breath catches in his throat. “Six.”

“Seven. Seventh’s more like…” Kunihiro scratches his stubble. “Like all the auras that make up the earth’s atmosphere are cells, and the seventh is the cell walls. Even someone sensitive to it wouldn’t notice. It would just feel like an overlap. No one ever thinks of white light as a stacked rainbow.”

“So you do know about it? Auras? The world’s energies?”

“Yeah. Earth is coated in rainbow magic.” He gestures all around them. “Religions based on it. Cults based on it. You can’t be a self-respecting criminal organization without abusing it.”

The boy is excited now, but he’s doing his damned best not to telegraph it. “What are they?”

“Why don’t you ask Zeni? He hoards conduits.”

“He says he has _Guardians_ ,” the boy says quickly, “he says he has people like me, but they don’t work the same way.”

Uh oh!

“Illusionists are filthy cheats. Being able to use flames without knowing a thing about them,” Kunihiro shakes his head sadly. He’s starting to panic, slightly. “’Guardians’ means he’s collected each aura type and gave them a nifty trinket to manifest their flames.”

“Like our fire.” He holds a hand up to the eye, which isn’t gored out anymore, though there’s still blood and probably-not-hand-soap dribbling down his cheek. Kunihiro can’t tell if the original eye was an illusion or not.

“Like this.” Kunihiro holds up his palms, revealing the objects tucked inside them; two halves of an arrowhead, with two halves of a red jewel inlaid into them. “Some things soak up so much aura that if you know how to feel for it, you can use it like a funnel. Illusionists don’t have many things like that, I’ve heard. Don’t need them. The Mystic’s Aura is so thin and easy to work with that any Mist type can use it to some extent. Seeing as you’re all filthy cheats.”

“Not like me, though,” the boy says, mostly to himself.

“No. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that.” Kunihiro’s eyes flick down. “It’s like…you’re not just projecting onto the atmosphere. You’re _controlling_ it.”

“I am.” The boy smiles haughtily. “I suppose you can call me the world’s most powerful Illusionist.”

“Well, it’s worth tits against half the spectrum,” Kunihiro tosses his hands up. “Storms can burn through it. Suns can push it away. Lightnings can’t dispel it, but they can avoid being affected.”

The boy is leaning forward.

“You want to know more?”

…And leaning back.

“You want to resolve this peacefully,” he deduces. “By striking a deal.”

“You don’t like Zeni very much, do you?” Kunihiro asks.

“I want to kill him,” the boy says with sudden, brilliant hostility. “I don’t care much for the _mafia_.”

“Haha, boy do we have a lot in common,” Kunihiro chuckles into his palm. “Drop the Shroud.”

“I can’t.”

“Because Zeni will come. What’s your plan for killing him, anyway?”

“I don’t have one.” The boy’s hand leaves his coat, and he folds his arms, not even bothering to act anymore, now that he thinks the two of them are on the level. This is sad and pathetic to watch. “He isn’t just hoarding magic knick-knacks. He’s an information broker. It’s how he acclimates power.”

“You want to know about auras. Flames.”

“More than that, but yes. Do you know how hard it is to kill a mafia family full of Aura users?” The boy says simply.

“One time I was stabbed with eight swords and thrown into the ocean,” Kunihiro admits.

He taps his fingers together. “Tell me what these auras are called. What they do. How frequent they are. I’ll risk dropping the shroud.”

“Done.”

“Let’s swear on it.” He pulls out a trident — no, a sai. It’s not a stabbing weapon, like Kunihiro is used to; it has blades. The boy uses it to slice along the round of his palm, and he holds the blade out to Kunihiro to do the same. Kunihiro does it with the tip. They shake on it.

“See? Wasn’t that easy?”

“Yes,” the boy smirks, “it was.”

Then he pulls out a white pistol and shoots himself in the head.

  
  


* * *

 

 

The walls are still blue, but dying out like old embers. Gi U is going to have to find another conduit.

The swordsman isn’t itching at his senses, anymore. He’s limp and useless and his head isn’t on fire anymore; the place where the bullet went in isn’t healing like it’s supposed to, leaving a bright red scar from where it bonded with the skin all wrong. But the Flame doesn’t really need to be there for this to work; Gi U only needed to check for it.

“Ajeossi,” he moans. He’s so _weak._ “It’s just like you said. Just like you said. I’ll know everything soon.”

He pulls the swordsman along, down a long, long hall, eyes glued to the massive doors at the end of it.

The grave of Asari.

  
  


* * *

 

Miki’s skin is starting to burn.

There’s something weird about this region. Everything is so much more _severe_. It might have something to do with the blue glow. He had tried projecting his power at Gokudera, and he went up like a _torch_. Not the kind of fire Miki is used to, either; like calligraphy, with lizard tongues.

Everything seems so much bigger than him, now, and his skin burns, and he just doesn’t understand _why_.

Gokudera stands, glares Miki down. Miki feels like he’s done something wrong. Well, technically he has; he’s not supposed to use his powers, especially in regions where it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. That’s mostly a suggestion, though, which is why it always made him uncomfortable that everyone from his dad to Uncle Kunihiro have outright banned him from even _approaching_ the Namimori hospital.

“Where’s the boss,” Gokudera says now.

“I don’t know.” Miki looks around. “I…I came here looking for him. I think they took him. The only person they attacked was Sasagawa-san.”

“We have an execution order for most witnesses,” Ben says, “it might be for the best if they’re captured. Might be worth something.”

“He sure as _shit_ is worth something,” Hayato barks, “he’s the Young Lion of the Vongola’s kid.”

That doesn’t mean anything to Miki, but Ben sucks in a tight breath.

“So where will they be holding him?”

“…We have a base, on an island. No one should be on it. Just one of the Guardians.”

“Guardians?”

“Zeni has a few people leaning the operation,” he explains. “Marcello — the guy I just killed — was one of them. They all act the same, either way. They want to be like Zeni, so they tend to get predictable. I’m assuming they’re only leading the operation because of this absurd magic shit. Not that I know. I don’t think they even told _each other_ about what they do.”

“So if they’re keeping their prisoners, this one Guardian should be looking over them?”

“I’m assuming.”

“Who is he?”

Ben shrugs. “Some kid and his mom? I don’t know what he does, but he said his name is Chrome.”

“What do we—”

_**KRA-KOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.** _

Miki shrieks and hits the ground. Gokudera is somehow already armed. Ben immediately moves to protect Miki; he had almost forgotten that he’s still under Miki’s control. Miki isn’t sure if he knows how to dispel it.

“That was from up on the trail,” Gokudera hisses. “…You go back to the woods, I left the gun kid behind. I’m checking that out.”

 

* * *

 

‘ _Chrome’_ cracks his neck left and right, and stretches out calloused, slightly hairy hands.

_What a body._

Yamazaki Kunihiro’s body, with a raw and exposed mind, strangely tender for how calm he seemed. Some people are so good at lying. Chrome can feel the acid buzz in his core now, and it’s so distinct that he finally understands what he meant by affinities and all that, because Chrome feels exactly the same in his own body, with a different sensation. Thin, transient, aimless, like trying to look directly at eye swimmers.

He can still feel it, of course. Chrome has spent most of his life outside of his body, even when he didn’t have to. Sometimes he did it to calm down, shoved his consciousness into someone else and forced them to hold his abandoned form. His entire existence is one extended depersonalization episode. At this point, Yamazaki Kunihiro may as well be a new limb. They may as well _all_ be limbs, and he himself an ephemeral nothingness bound to the air itself.

Back in his original body, the bullet is throbbing comfortingly. It’s not a real bullet; the original developers had given up trying to figure out how to reproduce the special bullets of more prodigious families. It’s the gun and the sai working together that maintains the extension, the sai to poison the target with his aura and the gun to knock him into the atmosphere.

It’s also the second time he’s used the gun in twenty-four hours. He can feel the headache blossoming. The Yamazaki Kunihiro form blocks out that little issue, and his original body sits up.

“Let’s see that information,” they both say at the same time, with the same expression.

He focuses back on the shroud, and everything it lets him see. Positions. Oh yes, the students are all fine. No fatalities. Zeni’s hires are trying to break into the yakuza’s little office, but someone warned them already, and they’re barricaded in, with only one fatality so far. Zeni isn’t on the island, of course; he’s just leaving. He can use his own affinity — Lightning, Kunihiro’s mind supplements — to just stroll right out of the Shroud, to the boats he had left outside it.

He’s not sure why he cares about that.

Then there’s the ruins, a horrible pimple, an exposed _sore_ against the atmosphere. Chrome couldn’t figure out why, before, but now it all makes sense through Kunihiro’s mind; Flames — not just the Auras, actual fully-manifested concentrated _Flames_ — are stacking endlessly. Before it was a vacuum, but now it’s an enormous pile-up that’s ringing over half the town. Most of it is Rain, which makes sense considering what the ruin actually is, _which is—_

Not important.

Most of it is Rain, and then Sun, and a slight smattering of Storm. They’re all bound together by a throbbing, insidious Sky that clings to the entire area, rooted deep in the stones. The projecting power is insane, and combined with those Sun flames, good lord, it’s like the region itself is a Wick. Wicks, Chrome realizes, are a word for conduits. He’s heard it before. He didn’t realize.

So much information. Chrome doesn’t usually tap into memories; it’s very hard, and takes a lot of energy. Still, he wants them. His original body slumps forward, and the Shroud weakens a bit as he dedicates less energy to the second body, the woman. She’s in a coma. She’s been in a coma for the past three years. Zeni gave her to Chrome, so he could make the Shroud. If he kills her, the Shroud will go away.

If he…?

Something’s wrong.

Zeni isn’t in the Shroud anymore. Now there won’t be a problem.

Chrome’s vision doubles, and his eye is sore, like there’s a budding pressure in it, but he doesn’t understand which body is hurting.

Chrome tries digging in, striking out wildly at Yamazaki Kunihiro’s mind. Illegitimate, used to be a _Kouyou_ , until _he was strapped into a chair and they told him he was doing a favour for his family._

Chrome freezes.

“Family doesn’t hurt each other,” says Yamazaki Kunihiro’s mouth, but Chrome isn’t the one saying it.

_She didn’t want to be part of the family, so they let her move out and have her own life. When she had a son, they just treated her like extended family, and he could visit her whenever he liked, up until they could taste the power on his—_

— _Power on his skin, power in the air, and on one level he knows they’re testing how long his heart has stopped, on how long they can keep him dead, but on another he can **feel the power in the air—**_

“What are you doing?” Chrome and Kunihiro and the woman all say simultaneously. They’re too confused and scattered to be individuals.

“What are _you_ doing?” Kunihiro’s body parrots. “Poking around where you don’t belong?”

“I’m only taking what I need—”

— _They don’t usually mix, and Kunihiro didn’t inherit the power, not even one or the other, but he at least inherited **a** power, and it was—_

— _Hell, hell, hell, it was like they were stapling each successful incident onto his eyeball, and this world, this infinite world, he wants to watch it all burn—_

“That’s your big plan? Destroying the world? What are you, _ten_?”

“Stop—”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Get out of my…head…?”

And Chrome realizes that it’s not Kunihiro’s raw, exposed brain he’s poking around.

_It’s his own._

Chrome’s vision triples, and he snaps back so hard he’s thrown back in his seat.

Kunihiro stands before him, eye still projecting a faint red, with Chrome’s own kanji printed over it. Chrome shakily drains his Aura until it goes away. He doesn’t understand.

Kunihiro cricks his jaw and smiles. “Rokudou Mukuro is it?”

_Did he ever tell him his name?_

“That was harder to snap out of than I thought, I have to admit. But do you really think this is my first time under mind control?”

Mukuro is too dazed to respond. His head hurts like it’s been put against a cheese grater. On _top_ of the headache. He think he might be dissociating. The world warps around him.

Kunihiro strolls casually up to the woman, and cups her cheek. He looks at Mukuro with furrowed eyebrows.

“You see? It’s easy.”

Her head goes up in flames. Mukuro recoils from the connection.

The Shroud drops.

 

* * *

 

Zeni halts, turns around.

The Shroud dropped. It’s too early. _Why?_

 

* * *

 

Shouichi stirs under warm hands and a soft voice. His yellow ring is scorching and letting off plumes of sparks, like an endless updraft of burning ash. The orange one around his neck is hot too, but not as much.

He squints up at the sky. It takes him a moment to remember the past hour, and why they had to run through the forest to begin with.

“It’s gone.”

 

* * *

 

On a jet only two kilometres away, a baby in a black cloak jerks violently.

“What is it?” A silver-haired swordsman asks.

“I don’t know,” the baby mutters. “The concentration of Mist Flames is just _gone._ ”

“No Shroud.” He throws his head back. “So what the fuck do I need you for?”

“Nothing. I suppose I’ll just take a nap.”

“VOI! _You useless sack of trash!_ ”

 

* * *

 

Iemitsu’s earwig beeps when he’s just outside Miyazawa. He can see the Shroud pop like a soap bubble even before he answers.

“The Shroud is down, sir. We’re heading in.”

 

* * *

 

“ _Anything suspicious?”_ Fuyumi asks over the phone.

“No, it’s mostly just road,” says Haru. “There hasn’t been anything since the guys from Hakuyou drove past.”

Miura Haru is only 13, and she’s never left town in her life, so going over to Miyazawa is a little exciting. Granted, her sister just wants her to poke around, see if she can fine Kurokawa-san, then leave, but it’s still exciting. She feels like an undercover reporter.

“Oh— hold on,” Haru gasps. She pedals harder, with her phone held between her cheek and shoulder. “Something’s up.”

“ _What? Does it look dangerous?”_

“There’s a bunch of cars all piled up. But they’re all going in now.” She takes the phone from her shoulder so she can pedal harder. She only catches up with the last car, with a woman shouting on the phone. She waves as she comes in. “Hey!”

The woman blinks, and holds a hand to the speaker. “…Yes?”

“What’s with the cars?”

“There was an, er. Terrorist scare. He’s all good and arrested now.” The woman’s mouth twitches.

Haru holds the phone to her ear. “Lady says there’s a terrorist scare.”

“ _She’s lying. Tell her your name.”_

Haru frowns, but looks up again. “My name’s Miura Haru.”

The woman pales, and she looks around nervously. “Oh god, she isn’t _here_ , is she?”

“What, my sister? No, she’s not allowed to leave town. I think she’ll get arrested if she does.”

The woman sighs in relief. “Right. We don’t know what’s happening in town. There was a Magician’s Shroud, but it just popped.”

“She says there was a Shroud,” Haru says into the phone.

“ _Uh-oh. Don’t go in there alone, okay?”_

“Okay. Hey, can I go in with you?” Haru asks the woman.

“ _Wait, Haru, I mean don’t go i—”_ But Haru hangs up on Fuyumi so she can put her phone away and hold both handlebars of her bike properly. It seems pretty dangerous, and she wants to keep her balance.

The woman sighs. “Well, it’s better than letting a Miura run around by herself. Grab onto the van, we’ll drive in together.”

 

* * *

 

When Zeni hired Ivo, he gave him a ritual knife from a ruin from somewhere else in the Mediterranean, and showed him how to use it. It’s a knife of power, healing Ivo’s wounds, making him invincible. It’s the best one, Zeni told him. The best of the Guardians. People like Marcello, who only cares about raw power, can’t have this.

And somehow, he’s being thwarted by a tiny little brat with a century-old sword made out of shitty metal.

He’s impossible to hit, with fist or blade. Every strike is dodged with the minimum amount of movement. It doesn’t even _look_ like movement; it looks like the _idea_ of it, the core minimum of what constitutes as moving without just flat-out sliding around like a cardboard cutout on a stick.

No bending, no twitching, no shuffling. The ground is rough. Ivo doesn’t understand how he can move like that.

“STAY STILL!” He bellows.

Even in the poor light, of only the glowstick and the knife, the brat doesn’t look right. He looks unreal. His eyes aren’t just dark, they’re _black_ , betraying nothing. The light scatters weirdly against them, reflecting in diagonal panels. Ivo turns the knife nervously, but the reflections don’t respond to the change.

“I think you should leave,” the boy says, coldly, almost devoid of tone at all. It just _is_.

“Stay. STILL!”

He strikes again and again, faster, using his size. But closing in on the brat doesn’t work the way he wants to. Because he’s armed. How did Ivo forget he was armed? The blade _burns_ on the way in, and it looks rusty.

The brat looks him dead in the eyes. Dead, dead fish eyes. They don’t even focus around. He looks like he’s blind.

“Leave.”

Ivo grabs the boy’s sword wrist and wrenches it away from the sword. He switches hands and flings him bodily down the hall. He can hear a short bark of pain as he lands.

“Little son of…”

He’s the strongest one. The strongest Guardian.

Ivo marches after him. He’s not where he should have landed, and he has to keep going right into the hall. The table is gone now, buried under all the rubble of the roof he broke down. The whole room is flooded with light, which was the point of dropping the roof.

He doesn’t see the brat. Ivo circles the rubble with a furrowed brow. That should have hurt like a _bitch_. Where…?

Moving rubble above him.

Ivo’s head snaps up, just in time to see the brat jumping down at him, sword raised up, and eyes blank.

 

* * *

 

The katana sinks deep into the big man’s shoulder, deep enough to mess up the muscles, but his other arm is still free to swat Tsuna away like a bothersome fly.

Tsuna skids across the floor, and he bites back a scream as the scattered pebbles scrape against the cuts he gained from being tossed onto the pottery shards in the hallway. His blood spatters across the ground.

“Why won’t you stay down?” The man bellows. His voice his loud and deep, as big as his form.

“I couldn’t be in the Disciplinary Committee if I wasn’t the type to get back up again,” Tsuna huffs. He gets back up again. The prickling, sucking sensation is getting worse. It’s driving him insane.

“What the hell are you even talking about?”

Tsuna grits his teeth and starts climbing again. The man climbs right after him. The sword is still stuck into him, and it’s limiting his movement, but not by much. Tsuna climbs backwards, watching his feet. He thinks he’s in pain, but he’s too dizzy to register any of it.

A big, meaty hand grabs at him, and Tsuna only barely hops out of the way. They’re on the dirt pile now, under the stream of light. The hole the guy made isn’t exactly huge, but there’s so much ground above the ruin, and so many cracks around the hole, the pile is a small mountain. Soon Tsuna’s hands start skidding against clumps of soil, and he slips backwards. He’s at the top.

“Just sit tight,” the man wheezes. Tsuna clenches his fists.

He heard them talking. Once he’s done with Tsuna, he’s going right after Hana. Then he’ll go right after Takeshi. The very least he can do is make it harder for him to succeed.

Tsuna leaps down again.

The huge man is ready for him, this time, and Tsuna sees the knife come up and understands what that means even before it’s driven deep, deep, deep into his chest.

 

 


	20. The Willpower of the Ashes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings** : Death, murder, needle squick, suicide ideation, gore, world's most horrifying dissociative episode

Kunihiro feels the backlash halfway to the shore.

He hits the ground, and his significantly smaller companion wobbles before being dragged right down with him.

“ _What—”_

“We weren’t all born illusionists,” he grumbles. “Your Mist aspect is thin, and you can _control_ it. Storm Flames, on the other hand, are thick. Burns the life right out of you.”

Mukuro pulls himself back to his feet with an irritated grunt. “Is that literal?”

“No. I’m just being _dramatic_.” Kunihiro sighs. The boy is so desperate for information that he won’t let a word drop. That’s so… _inconvenient_ , because it’s a pretty solid and reasonable way of approaching a conversation with him. There’s no teasing to be had here.

That being said, Kunihiro feels sluggish and his veins are burnt up. He likes channeling through his blood because it’s easy and if someone cuts him they’re in for a fun surprise, but it isn’t super great for his health. He pries the halves of the arrowhead out of his hands — the needles holding them in place come out painlessly — and flicks the blood off. Mukuro keeps looking urgently in the direction Zeni was heading.

“I could let you take off by yourself,” Kunihiro suggests mildly, “if you tell me more about Zeni’s crew.”

Mukuro’s lips thin, because his brain is revolting against itself, and he obviously can’t walk all the way to the water without vomiting and blacking out.

“Don’t worry, I’ll bring you to the water.”

Mukuro narrows his eyes, and slowly replies. “…There are five of us.”

“Uh-huh.”

“None of us are affiliated with the mafia. We can’t, in Japan. He’s here as an archaeologist.”

“With how many men?”

“Thirty-seven. Not including the ‘Guardians’.”

“Sounds dangerous. What are _they_ like?”

“Three of them are smugglers. They seem to have some stronger relationship with this…’Aura’.”

“They could already manifest Flames,” Kunihiro guesses.

Mukuro looks mildly perturbed that Kunihiro is consistently making him look like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but it’s his fault for being a shitty liar, and also a teenager.

“They’re red, yellow, and blue, specifically, if it means anything to you.”

“Storm, Sun, and Rain.” Sounds to him that Zeni was building a round spectrum. The fifth member ought to be a Cloud.

“In Italy, mafia families are deadlocked. They’ve subscribed to the illusion of untouchable grace,” Mukuro says with a haughty sort of disgust. “They don’t hire off the street. Zeni, meanwhile, enjoys his notoriety. If he says he’s willing to hire you, you don’t say ‘no’.”

“Either a career mafioso or not a mafioso at all.” Kunihiro pulls himself up with the assistance of a tree. “So they came for the jobs. You said that you wanted information, though?”

“…I was ousted while trying to infiltrate a family. I wanted to make sure not to make the same mistake twice.”

“Hum.” Kunihiro pulls Mukuro upright and slings his arm over his shoulder. “This have anything to do with how you want to destroy the world?”

Mukuro flushes, but his expression doesn’t so much as twitch.

“Figured as much. What about the fifth one?”

“Fifth one.”

“There’s five of you. You want information, the other three want a job. You said yourself that the woman was your Wick, to help you make the Magician’s Shroud, so she doesn’t count. So what does the fifth one want?”

The boy pauses, and his expression goes dark, with a wry twist of the mouth.

“It doesn’t matter _what_ he wants. It’s only a matter of who can keep him.”

Kunihiro begins his trek down to the shore anew. “…Kidnapping, sure. When it comes to kidnapping people, I’m an _expert._ ”

 

* * *

 

Gi U stumbles and falls on the slick ground. His hand slaps against the door, and his knees drag painfully over rough stone.

The swordsman is still slipping in and out of consciousness. Gi U tugs him closer to the door, and places his hand on it. He looks up, at the markings on the wall glowing in the faint light of the Aura cast off by their battle. They’ll be in pure blackness in moments, and he makes an effort to memorize the hall.

“Wake up,” Gi U whispers. “Wake up.”

The teen blinks, once, twice, and he groans.

“Everything hurts.”

“Don’t care.” Gi U presses his hand against the wall even harder. “Open it.”

“Mmghrr.”

“ _Open it.”_

The swordsman turns his face away.

Gi U lets out a guttural scream, grips the teen by the lapels, and shakes him. “OPEN THE DOOR!”

He squints. “Door?”

This isn’t working.

Gi U gets to his feet and presses his bare toes against the swordsman’s neck. The skin feels hot against his freezing feet. “I’m going to go back up there, I’m going to kill your friends, and I’ll make sure I tell Zeni what happened so he knows to kill the rest of your family too.”

There’s a moment of bewilderment, then shock, and then a tan hand is wrapped around Gi U’s pale ankle. For a moment, Gi U expects to be tossed to the floor.

Then, everything is blue.

Hard light, even more bright than before. The smoke-whisp of the Aura leaves aquatic patterns over the room. Gi U can see the energy shooting through even the shattered lines, filling out the cracks made by Gi U’s whips with light. The bigger damage leaves holes large enough that it starts pooling out like water.

And the door opens.

Gi U staggers past it, almost tripping over the swordsman. It’s here, it’s here, just like the scroll said it would be; an atrium at the heart of the ruins, with light coming from the billions of lines squiggling over the walls, shining off the water on either side of the walkway. As he marches past, the doors of the atrium open up, probably to more treasure, but he’s only interested in one thing, and it’s on the other side of the room.

He can hear the teen struggle to his feet, but Gi U doesn’t care about that.

“The grave of Asari,” Gi U whispers reverently. His footsteps are noiseless as he nears the great tomb sitting at the top of a smooth stone staircase. “It’s here.”

“The grave of who?”

“Asari Ugetsu.” He stops at the altar and traces his fingers against the coffin. “One of the most powerful Aura users in the world.”

“Oh. I feel like I would have heard of him. Like in a museum or something. Miyazawa’s like an hour and a half out of Namimori?”

“Probably not,” Gi U muses. “He invented the modern yakuza.”

 

* * *

 

The knife makes the glass of the photo in Tsuna’s shirt crack, and the force hurts more than the blade inside him. The impact rocks through his whole body — exploding against his ribcage with an oddly numb feeling — and he’s sent flying from the force. The knife makes a wet _‘shluck’_ sound as it’s torn free from his chest when he goes. He hits the far wall, and collapses into a heap.

The pain is sudden and _deafening_.

Broken glass digs into his stomach and chest, and he feels his flesh has been torn in two, down to bone. Tsuna tries to shriek, but filling his lungs is too painful. Small shocks from each wave of agony sparkle like stars against his brain, to the point that thinking is impossible. It’s like he’s crumbling with each vibration, until there’s barely any of him left. It fills him with a sickening chill that makes him feel like he doesn’t have any skin at all.

He’s pretty sure he broke another rib.

“Why y’gotta be like that?” The big man yells, a bit different in tone than before. More loose, more high. “What’s the point of all that determination, ay? I’m just gonna kill ya anyway?”

What’s the point of all that determination? Tsuna can’t think, beyond the vague vision of ‘ _Hana’_. Maybe a further threat. He can’t _think_. He wants to throw up, but the pain is so bad his entire body is convulsing with it, trembling all the way, and the trembling is agony in itself, and he’s never hurt this bad, _never never never_ hurt this bad—

Smooth it out.

He’s choking on god-knows-what, hurt and snot and saliva that can’t make its way down his straining throat. His eyes are blurry with tears. He’s so dizzy, so cold, and he’s never, never felt this way, and he wants it to stop, wants it to go away—

“And then, I’m gonna kill, whoever’s in there,” the man waves the blade towards the hall, “’cause I have to, you know? It’s my job. So why y’gotta do this, make my job harder, ay?”

Hana. _Do this for Hana_. For some reason. He can’t think. The man’s words hardly make sense.

“Just sit still, I’ll make it all stop.”

Tsuna _wants_ it to stop.

He wants to feel numb and empty and smoothed-over and nothingness, he wants to lay back and let himself die, but he can’t, he can’t, _he can’t—_

“Who’s in there with you. A girl?”

He can’t—

“Is she cute?”

_He can’t—_

“I’ll slit her throat real quick, ay? No worries.”

He can’t _think,_ but he _sees_. Tsuna grips onto the visual flash of Hana’s mortality like a lifeline. Hana, hiding in a closet, scared and alone. Hana, the type to freeze when she’s scared, he doesn’t need to see her do it, he just _knows_. Hana, just a normal teenager, Hana, who never wanted to be involved in things like this, Hana, leaping in to save his skin even though she ended up paranoid for days afterward, Hana, just trying to look out for him, Hana, dead because of him, all his fault, when he’s _right here to stop it._

_This is all his fault._

Something explodes out of the marianas trench of all thought decay, grips him by the soul, and takes him _up_.

Tsuna stands.

He sees everything in abstract; light, rock, large shape, the blurry disjointed mass of information that is a human, with an expression he can’t read when he’s this far gone. The pain is distorted, a ripple of meaningless sensation still thrumming from his chest. The knife is the most cohesive information he can register. His body is still shaking violently, and he still feels nauseous, but he got up, and everything feels so much easier after that.

Smooth it out.

Tsuna takes one internal look at all of his pain and suffering and tells it to _fuck off_. He smooths it, smooths out even the background hum of pain in his rib, just out of spite. He smooths it until it's not just meaningless, it’s _nonsense_ , forced into the infinite black depths of every part of him that's dead, which is so many parts, but not as many parts as before, and that somehow forms a good thing.

It's so easy to smooth his head out now. There's nothing at stake here, nothing but Tsuna.

And Tsuna isn't worth anything at all.

"Got some fight left?" Says the man.

With a voice that comes out rough from strain, Tsuna declares with a needlepoint iciness, _**"Yes."**_

 

* * *

 

Shouichi jolts awake for the second time to the sound of ripping fabric. Jolting is all he does, because he’s paralyzed.

Consciousness sticks easier now, but not by much. The ring isn’t smoking anymore, so that might have something to do with it. More troublesome is the paralysis, though. He hadn’t realized he’d been stunned. It feels like pins and needles.

Sometime between the last time he woke up and now, he was moved into the basin. Through the corner of his eye, he can see a shirtless man in a suitjacket. He’s shirtless because he’s currently tearing his button-up into pieces to wrap around Sasagawa’s limbs. Sasagawa is totally mottled with bruises, so ugly that Shouichi couldn’t hope to put a timestamp on them.

He glances up. On the treeline, Oogawa is curled up into a ball, with his hands clutched over his eyes.

“Whhhgh…” Shouchi wheezes. His tongue is numb.

The man without a shirt turns to look at him. “You okay?”

Shouichi twitches and narrows his eyes.

“Guess not. Your angry friend pointed me your way. I’ll start poking around for your friends when I’m done patching up this guy. We’ll start in that little cave thing over there.”

Shouichi looks around again, and winces when he sees a dead body a little farther away — the man that attacked him and Gokudera, with what looks like blood pooling around his head.

“Wouldn’t go down. Hopefully the rest of these guys aren’t as tough as the two of them were. I mean, that one over there is apparently the one who broke three metres of stone with a kid’s head, and I just had to shoot him a few times, shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Dttt…” Shouichi’s brow furrows. He looks around a little more insistently. It’s so hard to move his head.

“…Everything alright?”

Shouichi swallows. “ _…Two?_ ”

The man takes a second look around, eyes wide.

There is only one dead man in the basin.

 

* * *

 

The trail is a wreck.

The slab in the basin that had been shattered had sent an avalanche of dirt down when it fell into the small cliff, breaking the path into nothing but loose soil, and whatever made that noise had destroyed the rest. Trees have been uprooted, and Hayato’s feet sink in until he’s up to his knees in dirt. It’s slow-going work, but if there’s even the slightest hint of where Tsuna might be…

Hayato tries pulling himself out and onto a tree that had fallen on its side. There is soil in his shoes, and it’s _beyond_ irritating. He grits his teeth and pulls his shoe off to keep them from distracting him; he’s gone shoeless for months, once.

Then he goes for the other one, only to realize he can’t pull his leg out of the dirt.

Hayato shuffles back, trying to get some purchase on it. It’s stuck fast, but the dirt is too soft and loose to trap him. It feels like something heavy and formless is sucking at it.

Hayato holds a deep breath and physically yanks himself back using the tree. Still stuck. This isn’t natural. He looks around for any sign of a disturbance.

There’s a slight dip in the soil to his left.

Unlike the deep woods from before, this section of the path is right next to open air, and there’s no detritus to cause a fire. Hayato is free to chuck his dynamite at the dip.

It detonates, and the soil goes flying, arcing along the bloom of the explosion. Underneath isn’t orange, though, but a pearly blue. The sucking feeling lessens, and with a truly herculean effort, Hayato manages to pull himself out and onto the tree. Whatever the blue shit is, it follows after him in a bubble around his leg, and seeps off and back into the earth like gooey mochi when Hayato pulls it all the way in.

“What the…”

A man is standing at the lip of the blue goo.

He’s younger than Goatee, with long blond hair and a cross staff, and he seems to be inside some sort of bubble. His hair is matted with blood, and his suit is torn to shit.

“Who the _fuck_ are you?”

The man is quiet for a moment, before narrowing his dark, black eyes. “My name is Nazario, and you killed my best friend.”

“Technically, that defector down there did,” Hayato says thinly.

Nazario swings his staff, and the blue energy surges from the soil and converges onto Hayato like a tidal wave.

Hayato sprints down the length of the trunk, and leaps onto an upright tree. It leans under his weight without the grip of packed soil, and he uses the angle to climb up it. He chucks his shoe, and clucks his tongue when it hits the blue shield, slowing to a stop just before Nazario’s face. Nazario plucks it from the bubble and discards it over his shoulder.

So the shield isn’t rigid; that means it’ll absorb shock. Bullets and explosions can’t affect it.

His breath comes in faster. If bullets and explosions can’t affect it, what the hell _will_?

Another surge of blue, this time as a tentacle, shoots after him with a swing of the staff. Hayato leaps from the tree, onto another fallen trunk. There’s no way just exploding something around the shield will work, so…

He spots some rocks next to him. Hayato gets an idea.

Another tendril comes out from the dirt, and Hayato leaps to another tree, skimming rocks from the ground as he goes. He collects a fistful, and chucks one at Nazario.

It doesn’t even get ten centimetres in. Hayato runs the calculations in his head, and keeps running, right into the woods and away from the overturned soil. There are more rocks around the edges, and he takes them in two hands.

“Out of ammo?” Nazario calls after him, sending another tidal wave. Hayato barely manages to get onto another tree to avoid it, and he hisses in frustration when the entire ground is covered in goo. He’ll have to make do with what he has. Nazario can’t see him yet; he’s walking slow, and is probably injured, based on the state of his suit.

“ _We were going to be great,”_ the man continues, this time in Italian. “We were going to be great, we were going to pull ourselves out of the muck and show those prideful curs what they were abandoning! The rules of a mafia family need not be bound by nurture or blood! Do you even know what it felt like, being accepted by him! Being accepted by a _family!_ ”

Hayato hesitates.

He thinks he might.

“You think I haven’t heard of you? I’ve heard of everyone!” Nazario sends another tidal wave as he approaches. Hayato has to hop his way up the tree to get above it. “I know every scumsucking Blackmarket dreg there is. Marcello was one of the greatest smugglers in Italy, and we were _meticulous_. You think I haven’t heard of some little hitman _brat_ who can’t even fight his enemies face-to-face?”

Hayato takes off a sock and fills it. He uses his now-free hands to help him get back into the branches. With the bundle clutched between his fingers, he tries to remember the acidic heat from before. It came out so naturally when fighting Goatee. His heart is beating so painfully, and his lungs are raw.

“SMOKIN’ BOMB HAYATO, IS IT?” Nazario screams. “ _Hurricane Bomb_ Hayato? You can’t do a _damn thing_ without hiding! You were born a miserable little rat, and you were raised a miserable rat, and you wasted your talents for nothing! No one will ever want you, and it’s _all your own damn fault_!”

“ _Someone already took me,”_ Hayato says, in Italian as well, “All you got was a toy and a scumbag who would let his underlings die.”

He spins the sock and chucks it straight at Nazario, just as he enters into view.

It hits the shield perfectly, and sinks in about two thirds of the way. Nazario regards the frozen sock with disgust.

“Is this it?” He asks, gesturing to the object. “Is this the best a hitman of Italy has to offer?”

“Guess what the best kind of bomb is,” Hayato spits.

Nazario regards him blankly, and then looks at the sock in dawning realization. He reaches into his shield to grab the edge of the sock and pull it away.

Revealing a whole lot rocks, and a whole lot of tiny, miniscule explosives, all lit with long-tongued red flames that gnaw at the barrier.

Hayato huffs a laugh. “A shrapnel bomb.”

The explosives detonate.

 

* * *

 

The van stops on main street, and Haru watches uncomfortably as dozens of men in suits run around, all of them holding guns and looking terribly serious.

“Two Difo found dead,” one says to the nice blonde lady who drove Haru in, which Haru finds horrifying.

“Unbelievable.” The woman gets out of the van and marches out just as another van drives in. She runs up to the window and starts talking and pointing towards the shops. Haru slowly gets off her bike and carefully tries to put it on the bike rack and lock it up. Something fishy is going on here. Something… _illegal_.

Hopefully everyone here is also illegal. It would suck if Haru’s presence implicated her sister, and she got arrested. Haru has it on good authority that it is illegal for Fuyumi to exist in several countries, including Japan.

“Who the hell are you?”

Haru shrieks a bitten-off _‘HAHII’_ and whirls around to see a huge, hulking man and a cold and hard-looking woman, both in suits. She takes a step back. “I-I’m checking in on my friends! Haru means no harm! I came in with that lady over ther—”

“Don’t play games with me. This isn’t a place a civilian would be wandering around in.” The man reaches for her.

Thankfully, Fuyumi accounted for the possibility of Danger. Haru reaches into her bag and pulls out a taser. The man smirks, and his fist turns kinda yellowish. Haru shrieks again and drives the green, rubber-grip taser into the guy’s side.

She turns it on, and _everything_ is green.

It’s like he was struck by lightning. He actually glows, from the _inside_. Green static fires off his body, and his skin glitters oddly.

Several people point guns at Haru. Haru immediately pulls the taser away and clutches it close to her chest.

“What the _hell_ is that?”

“Guns down, GUNS DOWN!” The woman from before screams at them all. There’s a blond man next to her, now, and he radiates authority. He glares down everyone pointing guns at Haru, and they all cautiously lower their weapons.

The man approaches her in long, intimidating steps, hands in pockets, as the big guy Haru tazed collapses to the ground. He appears to have wet his pants.

He stops in front of Haru and regards her with the most soul-crushingly hard, emotionless look Haru has ever experienced, besides the time her school went up against Namimori middle school’s volleyball team and everyone was sitting four seats away from one grody-looking kid, who Haru thinks she might have hallucinated.

“What’s that you got there?”

Haru carefully uncurls her hands and holds the taser out in open palms.

He doesn’t take it, but his brow furrows. He turns to the woman. “That taser isn’t strong enough to light someone up like that.”

“Then how…?”

He considers for a moment, stroking his blond chin fuzz, and clicks his tongue. “They activated the grave.”

“ _Activated?”_

“It’s powered by Rain Flames, but it needs a Sky battery to maintain it. Something set the battery off.” He glances towards the hiking trails.

“Didn’t I tell you?”

Haru shrieks a the sudden appearance of another man at her side, and she leaps away, colliding into the van. She clings to her taser tighter when she sees the sword, and leather trenchcoat, and long, pale, straight hair that reaches the man’s hips.

“You underestimate the Bambino Beelzubub, you get fucked. Now point me in the right direction so I can kill the little bastard.”

 

* * *

 

It feels like Miki’s power is being sucked out of every pore.

He clutches his head with his palms embedded deep into his sockets, squeezing his eyes. They’re _burning_ , they’re burning so hard, and something about the basin is making it worse. It’s like a straw, pulling all of his energy to the forefront. It prickles on the way out. Why is this happening? Nothing like this has ever happened before. What happens if he looks at someone now? How much worse are his eyes?

“Kid!” Ben shouts, running up to him. “That staff bastard — Nazario — he’s missing, we gotta go after him!”

“ _No, noooo…”_

“ _Kid!”_

“I can’t!” Miki curls in on himself with a sob. _“I can’t control it!”_

“ _Open your eyes!”_

Before he can do anything to stop him, Ben wraps his hands tightly around Miki’s wrists and yanks them away.

Miki opens his eyes, and his vision whites out.

 

* * *

 

Ivo shudders.

The ruin is drawing his power out of him. It’s glorious. Raw. _Natural_.

His skin glitters with Sun Flames, unable to contain his sheer power, and it’s pouring from his knife. The kid could punch a hole in his gut and Ivo could survive it.

_So why does he feel so afraid?_

The boy isn’t just creepy now. He’s not passive enough to be a dead thing. He’s only standing there, but there’s a black hatred in his eyes, like a thin film over something raging and barely contained. His existence is a stifling, icy cold _nothing_ , an empty space where existence should be. Somehow, Ivo can instinctively tell that whatever is drawing his power out isn’t just ineffectual against the kid, it’s being _actively counteracted_.

Ivo feels like to touch him would be to die.

The boy wanders over to his sword and picks it up. He looks up at Ivo speculatively.

“D-Don’t you think you can stop me just because you sucked it up,” Ivo hisses. “Don’t you think you can fight me.”

The boy stretches his neck all around, and holds the sword up to point at Ivo. He has terrible form.

Ivo charges.

His knife sputters out as it gets closer, and loses its light entirely when it grazes his skin. The boy dodges in that smooth, cardboard-cut-out sort of way, and the katana slides across Ivo’s stomach. It’s a thin cut, but he can see the abyss temporarily bloom over his entire torso, and his Sun Flames go out for half a second.

Ivo hesitates in his shock, and the boy swings again. The katana is lodged deep into his arm, point-first, and the Flames flicker, but ultimately don’t pass.

Ivo yanks the sword out and stops for a horrified second as he realizes that the _boy himself_ is canceling out the Flames. If he removes the boy of his weapons, the boy can remove him of his power.

The boy reaches out, and Ivo wheezes slightly and swings. The knife cuts a sharp, bitter line, thin but slightly jagged from the awkward meeting of angles. The boy doesn’t even twitch, and his fingers close around the handle of the katana. His eyes are unfocused, but blazing.

What comes out of the boy’s arm is not blood.

Ivo takes a step back. “What are you?”

The boy steps forward.

“What the _fuck_ are you?”

What comes out of the boy’s arm is black and gnaws on the very edges of reality. What comes out is ice and abyss.

This boy is the abyss, and he’s staring straight at him.

“My name is Sawada Tsunayoshi.”

 

* * *

 

Oregano hates Superbi Squalo.

She hates him. She doesn’t think she’s physically capable of disliking a person as much as she dislikes Squalo. He’s awful. He’s an irresponsible scumbag that got his position far too young and the vastly superior leadership Varia had for that one brief, heavenly period didn’t communicate all that much to Squalo, who only knows how to scream and stab things.

And now he’s here in Miyazawa, mostly unattended, and Oregano is responsible for his every move.

The CEDEF, as an advisory and information organization, end up with the monthly reports from the Varia, and Oregano has to file these reports in order for the CEDEF to keep up with them. And the damage costs. Uuuugghh. Political violations. Uuuuuuugghh. That one time their hooded baby illusionist tried to put thirteen Russian noblemen into irreversible debt in one of the most elaborate cons Oregano has ever seen in her entire life. UUUUGGGHHHH.

She doesn’t trust him to run around without supervision, here, especially with missing children. The likelihood that Squalo will endanger them all unnecessary for the sake of landing his target is unfortunately rather high. While she’d much rather continue helping that nice Miura girl find her friends, visions of Squalo destroying three apartment buildings haunt her constantly, and her choices are narrow.

“VOIIIII! Stop slowing me down, you piece of trash secretary!”

“I wouldn’t have to slow you down if you actually _filed any of your reports_ ,” she huffs, hopping over tree roots, “or stopped _destroying precious landmarks,_ the kind of thing _I need a report on—_ ”

“Fuck you!”

“As your supervisor, I will fight god to make you legally obligated to _fuck your swo_ —”

They both feel it at roughly the same time.

Iemitsu had mentioned the nature of the sky battery, and Oregano could feel what he meant back by the hotel, but between one step and the next, Oregano can actually, genuinely _feel_ the resonation sucking at her. It’s like her energy is being pulled out in billions of little strings out of her pores. It’s incredibly unpleasant.

She keeps a straight face and plows on, desperate to assess the situation before Squalo can ruin it.

The Churchgrave looks like hell. Half of it has collapsed into the water basin, and the trail overlooking it has basically liquified from whatever fights took place here. There’s a dead man on the rocky shoreline, and she catches sight of a child fleeing into the bushes with someone on their back.

Iemitsu wasn’t kidding when he said that the Flames required to power the ruin would kill the average man. The water is so thick with Rain Flames that it’s radiating upwards, a ghostly spiral of rippling ribbons of white flowing through a cerulean haze. It’s almost as high as the cliff overlooking it.

It’s not the only alarming surge of Flames. Also on the shoreline is a boy who’s skull appears to be on fire.

No, not his skull, his _eyes_. His forehead is just glowing. His eyes, though, they’re spitting orange fire that occasionally explodes with glittering Sun Flames like a campfire spitting sparks.

“What the _fuck_ is that?”

“Don’t touch him, don’t even look at him,” Oregano warns. “That’s a Kouyou manifestation. If you so much as breathe on him they’ll have your head.”

“A whatwhat?”

“Kouyou. Akiyama. Namimori yakuza?”

Squalo gives her a blank look.

Oregano fucking _hates_ Squalo.

“You know, I bet Xanxus would know what I’m talking about,” she bemoans.

“You’ve never even met the Boss.”

Oregano grunts and adjusts her gloves, marching towards the Kouyou boy. “You’re the boss! You’ve been the boss for eight years! And a terrible one!”

“If you hate what I do that much, why don’t you go back to your precious leader and organize the rest of your crew like a good little secretary?” Squalo snorts.

“Organize _what_? I have no idea what I need to clean up, because _you don’t file your reports_!”

Someone suddenly appears and punches Oregano clean into the water.

She can feel her body functions start to shut down the moment she’s submerged. Oregano flails and kicks back to the surface, and finds it impossible to breathe until she finally manages to collapse onto the ground again.

Standing in front of the Kouyou boy is a man wearing a suitjacket and no shirt, bruised and splattered with a spray of blood so thin it looks like freckles on his blank, tanned face. It’s not someone Oregano recognizes; he’s a little haggard, bony, poorly-shaven, and the gel in his hair looks cheap, so she suspects he’s either Blackmarket or destitute.

His eyes are also glowing.

She can’t see anything but a backlit yellow, and Sun Flames are seeping out of him, especially out of his forehead. It looks like a cowl of gold.

“Squalo—” Oregano looks around, only to find him sticking his head in the opening to the ruins, which are also fully lit in blue. “SQUALO!”

“Hey, you said I can’t touch him.”

“You can touch _this one_!”

“Bambino Beelzebub waits for no one.”

Oregano fucking hates, _hates_ Squalo.

The bastard leader of the Varia takes off, leaving Oregano alone to face an uncontrolled Kouyou and his topless mindpuppet.

“Fine. I can take this.”

She takes a step forward. The puppet flies into movement like it’s a threat, swinging a punch, another, a kick, and an elbow. Oregano swiftly dodges all of them with pristine posture she learned from the best.

If there’s one good thing about the unnatural sucking draw of the ruins, it’s that she’s open to cheat.

The mindpuppet comes in close again, and Oregano places her open palm onto his chest and _pulses._

He goes flying forty feet in the air, and lands somewhere in the trees.

“That wasn’t so hard,” she says cheerfully.

The Kouyou boy makes a noise of distress. She marches closer, and gently puts her hands over his eyes. There’s a pull, an unnatural, all-consuming urge to protect him, but he hasn’t said anything yet, so it isn’t as effective as it could be.

She keeps her Flames as far away from her hands as possible and waits it out. It’s real fire, and it’s scalding as all hell, but she can’t think of any alternatives. He seems too weak to do it himself.

Eventually, the Sky Flames spitting out of his skull die down into a glittering smoke, before finally dissipating.

“There you go, it’s over. It’s over now. Keep ‘em closed.”

The glow throbs in a way that looks almost painful, but it trembles and dims, like a flickering candle before being blown out. The Kouyou boy lets out a soft wail as it fades away, and starts to sob underneath Oregano’s fingers.

“I did it again…I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay. No one got hurt.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“It’s okay. We don’t know how to treat you, though. Would you like us to call a member of your family?”

“No…” He shakes his head and sniffles, clutching his eyes by himself now.

“…I just want to go home.”

 

* * *

 

Hayato stands over Nazario, breathing heavily. His hands are shaking, and he can’t figure out how to make the red fire go away, so it’s kind of just leaking out of his palms, now, like something is sucking it out with a straw.

There are wounds all over Nazario’s body, deep gouges and cuts and some spots where the rock shards are still embedded. He’ll likely bleed to death within the next twenty minutes. It’s weird; Hayato feels like he should have been harder to kill.

“Is that it?”

Hayato works his jaw. He’s worried about Tsuna. He has to go.

“…Is what it?”

“Dying in the dirt in some backwater town at the hands of a streetwise nobody?”

Anger flares up inside him. “You’re making this about you? You all tried to— you’re trying to kill us and you’re making this about _you_?”

“What else can I?” Nazario chuckles, and winces at the pain. “I watched my friend die in front of me. I’ve been clawing at opportunity for years, with them, and we finally got it, and…who are you? Who are you to do this to us?”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“I wish you did.” Nazario clenches his jaw, and Hayato can see tears shine in his eyes. “He died like a _dog_.”

Hayato should kill Nazario right now and leave.

“You think you’re the only one who struggled?” Hayato says. “You think you’re the only one who wanted to belong to someone? I’ve been fighting out of the _cradle_ , and _you think you’re the only one_? The only difference between me and you is that I didn’t settle for some beehive-poking _moron_ who would cause a war for _baubles_!”

Nazario stares into open sky.

“What did you settle with, then?”

“He’s…” Hayato hesitates.

Nazario doesn’t even blink.

“…He’s just a kid,” Hayato says thickly. “He’s just a kid. And he’s, uh. He’s pretty thick. And weak. Real flimsy. Insecure, you know. About everything. No guts to him.”

Nazario lets out a creaking laugh. “You _really_ settled.”

“But he’s…he’s got good blood. And…” Hayato sucks in a wet breath. “And he’s got a strong heart. He cares about people. He cares about the dregs. He cares about people’s potential. He knows where power is at, but he…he pulls everyone up with him. He’s responsible. He’s good. He’s _good_.”

“Ivo’s down there,” Nazario says, almost conversationally, “and I hope he breaks every bone in that little shit’s body and pisses on the dead meat.”

Hayato is filled with _Red_.

 _Trust nobody, trust everybody._ What a crock of shit, spat out by someone nurtured by the soft gooey family feelings of a criminal web that can only afford to sustain itself in Japan. What a load of complete fucking _garbage_.

The mafia is filthy and the Blackmarket is filthier, and dying like dogs are what _all_ of them deserve.

He leans down and takes the staff. It sizzles and cracks under his palms. He stamps it clean in half and whirls on Nazario.

“I’ll forget your name,” Hayato bites, “everyone will.”

“Do it. I’ll see the brat you settled on in hell, and tell him _you failed._ ”

Hayato screams and lifts the staff to stab the man in the throat.

Suddenly, a body comes flying into the trees, and lands roughly eight feet away.

It’s the traitor lackey. He springs to his feet, looking around deliriously. When he catches sight of Hayato — filthy, wearing only one sock, and standing with a weapon over a shredded-up man — he gasps, looks around suspiciously, and promptly sprints off into the forest and out of sight.

Hayato drops the staff, suddenly overcome by a sobering burst of self-awareness.

“What are you doing?”

“This is ridiculous.” Hayato steps away from Nazario, shaking his head. “I’m going to find my boss.”

“ _Come back!”_

“I hope you meet your friend in hell, and have a nice drink about how you two got killed by some rando with a gun and a kid with a bunch of rocks.”

“ _ **KILL ME!”**_

Hayato grimaces. “Go kill yourself.”

And then he starts running, towards the place where the trail had broken down.

When Hayato killed someone for the first time, he holed himself up for days, terrified and guilty to the point of illness. Chances are, if he tries to get close and personal with murder again, it’s going to be more of the same.

Tsuna is okay. He has to believe at least that.

And the least Hayato could do is be in the right mind to save him.

 

* * *

 

Squalo goes for the first source of noise in the ruins. He can sort of tell that it’s not the right one before he even turns the corner. Too quiet. Usually the Bambino Beelzebub would do something more immediate, like drop-kicking him. He’s a little kid and furious about everything; he doesn’t have the subtlety to hide.

The only noise is a repetitive _thunk_ of something entering a pliable material. As Squalo nears, he realizes it has a gristle to it.

He stops in the doorway to a dining hall, illuminated by the opening where half the roof had collapsed in. Dirt and rocks are everywhere. Squalo marches in, having no patience for caution.

The source of the noise is a thin little creature. It looks small and pale enough to be his target. Squalo sets his sword onto his hand and points it, eyes narrowed.

The noise itself is the repetitive, almost robotic movement of the person stabbing a man five times his size in the head.

Squalo continues forward when the tiny thing doesn’t react to him, and grips their wrist as they raise the knife up again.

Finally, they turn to look up at Squalo.

 _It_ turns to look up at Squalo.

It isn’t the Bambino Beelzebub, that’s for sure.

“You seen a tiny, evil child who deserves death anywhere?”

The thing blinks once, and its non-eyes slide to the door where Squalo came from. “Last door on the left. He attacked my friend.”

“Alright. I’ll leave you to it. Great work for a civvie.”

The thing looks down numbly at the corpse underneath it. It no longer has a face.

“Thank you.”

It carefully slides the knife into what would have been an eye socket forty-two stab wounds ago and carefully gets up. Squalo stops to watch, in morbid curiosity, if nothing else. It manages to get about five metres in the direction of one of the hallways before collapsing to the ground.

“You get your ass kicked?”

“I broke a rib.”

“You did?”

“I broke two ribs,” it says. “The first one was a while ago.”

“Don’t know when to stop, huh. I like that. Stick around, someone will scrape you off the floor.”

“No.” It gets up, and starts walking again. Squalo waits for it to fall, but it vanishes into the shadows of the hallway without stumbling, in an awkward, zombie-like shuffle.

After a few seconds, the thing hisses and cusses under its breath. A pottery shard comes flying out of the hallway.

This entire mission is _fucking unbelievable._

Squalo takes off in the direction the dead thing told him to go, grinning all the way.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those aren't Night Flames, by the way. They're more akin to ashes.


	21. The Willpower Of What's Left

Tsuna has to limp the rest of the way to the room. The cut burns, and he holds his stomach uncomfortably, wary for the moment his ribs decide to hurt again.

He doesn’t have a solid concept of time. It’s just one hallway, and the sound of his bare foot dragging slightly.

He stops in front of the closet and moves to open it, but wobbles, overcome by dizziness. It feels like his whole brain is shutting down. Opening a door is an insurmountable effort.

Tsuna takes a deep breath and slides his hand over the handle. He has to tug it, he reminds himself. You put the hand on the handle and you tug it. It seems oddly complex, and his arm isn’t cooperating.

At a loss, he just grabs it and falls backwards.

Hana is curled up inside, bowed over her sword and trembling. Her hair is hanging over her eyes.

Tsuna uses the low-set table to climb back to his feet, and he approaches the cabinet cautiously.

She slowly raises her head. Tsuna can’t see her in the light of the one glowstick he picked up in the hallway, but he presumes her face is really puffy and red from all the crying.

“Is that blood?” She asks wetly.

“It’s not mine,” says Tsuna.

“Why are you covered in blood?”

Tsuna looks at his hands. They’re completely slick, and the glowstick is all smeared. His entire front is covered in dark stains. He cannot for the life of him remember why. He definitely killed the big guy, didn’t he? That happened. He’s pretty sure it happened. Stabbing was probably involved. He had a sword at one point.

“I panicked.”

“You panicked.”

“Yeah.”

Hana’s face collapses into a pained look, and her lip wobbles. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Tsuna tries his best to smile. He doesn’t think he’s doing a good job of it. “I’m fine.”

Then Hayato leaps into the room and tackles him to the ground.

 

* * *

 

The tiny kid starts scrambling around the floor, digging at the lines.

Takeshi feels nauseous, everything hurts, he think he might have actually re-broke his arm in a way twice as ridiculous as ‘set the ball machine too high’, and it’s getting harder to concentrate. He sways in place, trying to remember what spacial awareness is. He can’t kill anyone in this state.

It’s been too long anyway. It isn’t worth it. He should go back and find his friends.

The little boy lets out a shout of triumph and starts yanking on something on the floor. After a few tugs, he pulls up some sort of drawer. He’s so small that he has to climb onto the coffin to pull it up all the way.

Takeshi approaches. It looks like some sort of rack, featuring a book, an oodachi, and three smaller tachi, all of varying lengths. At the bottom is a bangle, and some sort of glowing orange rock. The chasm in Takeshi’s heart deepens.

The kid pries the bangle out and chucks it so it plops in one of the shallow pools of water lining either side of the path. The chasm inside Takeshi abruptly lessons, and he can finally breathe.

Then the kid gets to yanking the swords out and examining them. The oodachi is checked and discarded first. Takeshi picks it up and unsheathes it by pulling at the tip with his toes. A little concentration, and the entire blade glows as blue as the markings on the wall.

“This is what you came for?”

“Yes.” The boy checks the last sword, makes a face, and tosses that one on the coffin too. Takeshi examine the tachi; it also glows, but only at the base and a thin stripe along the edge of the blade.

It doesn’t _look_ like what he came for. The boy immediately starts trying to shove the lid off the coffin. Takeshi would help, but Takeshi is currently exhausted and in more pain than he’s ever been, with only one working arm.

The stone slab is finally pried away. He inches closer to look inside. There’s a whithered mummy, probably preserved by the coffin, dressed in a men’s kimono. His hands are folded over his chest. There’s a fox mask underneath them.

The boy pulls the mask out and turns it over. It doesn’t look like much. After a few seconds, he carefully replaces the mask and uses his butt to nudge the lid back in place.

“Not finding what you’re looking for?”

The boy hums irritably. He gets up, only to stumble again. Takeshi moves to support him, but…

The kid’s leg is a limp spiral, like an unwound slinky.

“Woah—”

“I’m fine,” he says, and hops over to the wall.

That…doesn’t look fine at all! Takeshi is pretty sure slinky-leg does not fall under the designation of ‘fine’!

The little kid starts scratching at the walls. It jolts, like something rocking on a base; Takeshi guesses it slides. So does the boy, who yanks at it until it starts nudging over. After about half a metre of this, it abruptly finds its rails again and slides as easily as a paper door.

Beyond the sliding wall is nothing more than a painting.

It must have been sealed like that to preserve it from the damp atmosphere. It’s huge and full of vivid colour, featuring a collection of seven men who seem to be in their thirties who don’t look they belong in the same era, let alone the same room.

And one of them looks exactly like him.

...Well, that's an exaggeration. He's pale, almost colourless, and his face is all angles in comparison to Takeshi's own roundness, and there's a hard calmness in his onyx eyes that Takeshi associates more with his dad than anything he could accomplish. Also, he is in his thirties, and Takeshi is fourteen years old. In fact, he...doesn't actually look anything like Takeshi at all. That's weird. He's not sure why he thought they were similar.

Then it happens _again._

The man in the middle, in a suit and smiling fondly, Takeshi is sure he looks exactly like Tsuna, but on closer inspection, no he doesn't. For one, he's clearly European, not Japanese, but there are other things too; like how he's blond, with actually groomed hair, and his eyes are narrow and warm and constant like burnished brass, and his every feature is delicate and soft. A hard contrast to Tsuna, who looks like a very tired, very old cat on a good day, with huge eyes the colour of rotted old wood that had been sitting in the summer sun for too long and skin a sickliness to a similar effect. Takeshi think they might genuinely resemble each other if Tsuna didn't look so much like a beige towel that had been savagely wrung out, but on the other hand, he finds the wrung-out look kind of endearing. The man in this portrait just looks too... _perfect._

Ah. Another one. Off to the side, looking like he would like nothing better than to leave, Hibari. This one is even worse, because this man has absolutely nothing thematically in common with Hibari. Blond, European, a distant expression etched into hard features (Takeshi has never known Hibari Kyouya to be anything less than terrifyingly intense), and a prominent nose that should have thrown him off from the beginning.

 _Again!_ That redhead. That one looks like Hayato. They actually even genuinely resemble each other, so Takeshi doesn't feel quite as bad for being so grossly inaccurate in his associations — he has Hayato's long face shape, though he seems to be purely European. His eyes are wicked sharp, though, as are his cheekbones. On the other hand, that tattoo of stylized flames looks like something Hayato would definitely put on his face, and the body language and expression is practically an exact mirror. Especially how he's hovering over the Tsuna-esque man in the centre.

There's also a handsome black-haired man with a crooked nose over in the corner and Takeshi decides Sasagawa Ryouhei completely without thinking and then is genuinely confused because there is _zero resemblance._ Not even in body language. He might actually be hallucinating.

Takeshi is only emboldened by the fact he doesn't recognize the remaining two; a younger, bored-looking pale-haired man on the greener side of blond with his outfit untidy but expensive-looking, and an extremely intimidating man with his hair tied in a long rat tail, holding a glass of wine and expressing an absolute mastery of Tsuna's 'exhausted and ancient feline' appearance. But like... _angrier_. A 'tired old cat that had recently been splashed with water' kind of look. He also seems to share some of Tsuna's...Takeshi wants to say _darkness_ , but it's too grim a word to describe Tsuna's natural aura of simultaneous unnatural menace and bland disinterest. So maybe he's not hallucinating. Maybe he's just picking up on some common traits instinctively, and can't consciously identify what those traits are.

Together, the men are in various states of classy dress, with all the European men wearing various suits and the Japanese man Takeshi had thought to resemble himself wearing what looks like a noble's outfit from the Heian era, though Takeshi gets the feeling that this painting is _probably_ not over 800 years old.

They're all surrounding the blond man who feels like Tsuna, who is holding a swaddled infant in his arms. The infant is blond as well, reaching for the man's face, and Takeshi knows with an absolute certainty that it's his child. There's a small metal plate at the bottom of the picture frame labeled _'Proteggere Ieyasu'_. He has no idea how the heck you're supposed to read that. Is that English?

Below the whole thing is a small oval featuring a sepia photograph of an unsmiling man, significantly younger than the ones featured above, maybe in his early twenties. He wears his hair loose, and the back is held in a star-like spray of hair. Takeshi is guessing he died before the rest of them.

The kid hops back, also staring at the painting. He takes the book from the rack and flips through it. His eyes keep dancing back and forth, like he’s expecting something from it.

“So what’s all this? Who’s grave— I mean, it’s Asari Ugetsu?”

“Father of modern yakuza, yes.”

“Wow. Who are these people?”

“Vongola. They own the land Asari’s grave was built on.” The kid very clearly isn’t paying attention.

Takeshi hums. “…So the Japanese guy is Asari.”

“Mm.”

The boy’s brow is furrowed. He keeps comparing the first few pages with steadily mounting frustration.

“Why does he kinda remind me of me?”

The boy freezes.

He whips his head up, looking distinctly horrified, and actually takes a moment to look hard at the painting, and then at Takeshi.

“He doesn’t—”

“I know he doesn’t. He just. Reminds me. A few others kinda remind me of people I know, too.” Takeshi almost walks closer, but then his body reminds him of how much pain and exhaustion he’s in, so he just sags onto the coffin instead. “Uh…might be delirious.”

The boy stares, eyes hard and gleaming. After a moment, he takes a tachi.

And then he chucks it at Takeshi.

“H-Hey!”

“Don’t complain! It’s yours! I’m returning it to you!”

“What? No it’s not!”

“Shut up! Take your stupid blades!” He chucks another tachi at Takeshi, and then the oodachi. “Take your stupid book!”

Takeshi at least manages to catch the book, though the tachi clatter to the floor. “What’s your problem?”

“It’s all yours! It’s all yours it’s all yours it’s all yours and none of it means anything to me!” The kid is tearing up now, and his face is red as a beet.

“Uh…weren’t you just stealing it for a job?”

“It was lies lies lies lies…” He clutches his head and tries to walk backwards, but his slinky-leg does him in, and he collapses onto the floor. Takeshi jerks when he sees the kid has _two_ slinky-legs, now, and there’s a scary-looking crease on his stomach.

“Woah, what’s happening to you?”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

“No, man, I think you’re going to go undone.”

“ _I HATE YOU!”_

Takeshi pushes the swords away and examines the boy more closely. It’s not just coming undone, it’s those little threads coming off his body, and lumps rising from his skin. Takeshi fights with a dizzy spell to look closer. The lumps are falling apart into little peels. Petals. They’re tiny roses.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“ _ **UAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”**_ The boy strikes out, smacking Takeshi over the head. Takeshi winces away and looks up.

“…I’m going to go find my friends and take you out of here.”

“ _Leave me alone!”_

“I just…” Takeshi gets up, and promptly gets right back down again, overwhelmed with vertigo. His breath is coming in short. He can barely keep himself from collapsing. His vision is blurring. He reaches out blindly, and feels his fingernails drag against nothing but stone.

When he reaches out far enough, he can feel something firm. He thinks it might be the coffin, and he presses against it so he can orient himself better.

It’s not the coffin.

The rock tumbles out of the rack, and the entire place goes dark.

  
  


* * *

 

“Get off me.”

“Is that your blood? ARE YOU DYING?”

“Hayato.”

“Where’s the wound! I know first aid!”

“Hayato, get off.”

“There’s no need to pretend to be strong, the enemy’s been wiped out—”

“ _Get off me,”_ Tsuna swipes him away. “I’m fine. This isn’t my blood.”

Tsuna can’t see Hayato’s face since the glowstick is still by Hana, but he imagines he’s frowning. “…Why are you covered in someone else’s blood?”

“I panicked.”

“Is there a dead body out there?” Hana whispers from the cupboard. “What did Tsuna do to it?”

“I didn’t see a body. We’ll have to check to see if he’s still alive,” Hayato says grimly.

“Fuck’s sake, Gokudera, Tsuna’s wearing half his blood count! I’m _pretty sure_ he’s dead!”

“Wow, _I don’t remember asking you.”_

“I don’t know what I did,” Tsuna says with a grunt as he gets to his feet. “But I’m pretty sure someone else was there too.”

“What, really? Did they let you go?”

“I don’t remember, I just think he was there. He had…” Tsuna gestures generally from his scalp to his hips. “Just, a lot of hair. And I think his arm is a sword.”

Hayato is suspiciously silent.

Tsuna continues, if only to keep his mind off how hard it suddenly is to walk. He wobbles unsteadily. “He’s looking for the kid we were captured with. Bambino whatsit.”

“Bambino Beelzebub,” Hana mutters, stepping carefully out of the closet. “He’s got these crazy vines and he’s awful and I hate him.”

Hayato takes in a sharp intake of breath. “…Yeah, we better get the hell out of here.”

“What?” Tsuna turns to look at Hayato’s shadowed outline. “No, we have to pick up Takeshi, he’s still…he’s fighting that kid right now.”

“Ngghh…” Hayato clicks his tongue. “Yeah, okay. Listen, that man; he works for the people who own this property. His name is Superbi Squalo, and he’s the leader of one of the world’s most exclusive hit squads.”

“ _Oh my god.”_

“Don’t worry, he’s not here to take out a hit.” He pauses. “Well, actually, yeah he is. But I don’t think he was hired. You see, this Bambino Beelzebub guy is _notorious_ , yeah? But all anyone knows about him is that he’s tiny and uses vines.”

“He’s Korean and like, ten years old,” Hana says flatly.

“…I don’t believe you on principle. So, he’s a notorious _thief_.” Tsuna stumbles, and Hayato catches him easily. “He’s been known to hit a lot of museums, historical exhibits, that sort of thing. One of those master cat burglars. But about six months ago, the guy starts robbing mafia families. Pissed a loooot of powerful people off. There’s always a job open to kill him, and I have like six running theories on what the hell he is to get away with something like that.”

“Wait, so…is the Squalo guy here to collect his bounty?”

“Uh, no,” Hayato says mildly. He readjusts Tsuna to sit on his him as he dances over the broken pottery Tsuna had stepped on when looking for Hana. Tsuna notes that it doesn’t hurt anymore, and that’s maybe not a good thing.

“If rumours are right, Beelzebub has met every single one of the guy’s hit squad and lived to tell the tale. This isn’t an assassination, it’s a grudge match.”

 

* * *

 

The sucking feeling abruptly cuts out, and Squalo is submerged in blackness.

The battery must have failed. Either that, or the little shit actively sabotaged it.

Fine enough, even though it makes it hard as shit to see. Navigating while impaired is more of Lussaria’s thing; Squalo’s job is and always has been to take down Flame Users too big to crush, generally in a duel, so he’s a little out of his element.

For now, Squalo is using a flashlight, like a sucker. There’s nothing but rubble at the bottom of the little battlefield; whatever civvie got on the Beelzubub’s bad end is clearly dead, but there’s no body that Squalo can see. The rubble ends abruptly into a hallway, which ends in an open door. Squalo would bet his other hand that this is the gravesite.

Thing is, though, no one’s ever opened this place before. A lot of the Vongola Rain Guardians have tried their damndest, but nothing would budge past the entrance room. Just smashing through that shit obviously served the kid well enough, but the same deadlock should be on this _clearly undamaged_ door.

Squalo thinks back. The entire lake was glowing, which means at least one Rain user was down here, turning the whole ruin on. That means the shitty little thief’s got a rain user on retainer. He’s going to have to kill _two_ people. What a pain in the goddamn ass.

He stops after a few paces and runs the flashlight over his surroundings. A path, with water on either side, and doors lining each wall. It looks more like a temple than a grave.

“ _ **VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIII!”**_ Squalo screams.

His own voice echoes back at him.

Fuck, is he already gone?

Squalo takes off at a sprint until he finds an actual coffin. There’s a dull glow coming from the base, and the hunk of ore being used as the battery conduit is lying on the floor, like it just fell over. The Sun Flame bangle used to activate everyone the ore resonated with is sitting in the water nearby.

“COME OUT, YOU LITTLE BRAT!” Squalo screams again. He waves his sword around threateningly, but is already making mental plans to head back up to wait outside. No point chasing someone as slippery as the Bambino Beelzebub in an underground mystery maze.

Squalo checks the other side of the stone coffin just in case.

Well, there’s the body, at least.

And…a big-ass sword. Is this from the grave? Why would the master thief leave his stolen shit behind? God, if he kicked it before he got here, Squalo is going to be _pissed_.

He should probably report the fatality, though. Oregano will bitch at him for the next three-hundred years if he doesn’t, and then he’ll have to spend another two hours listening to her whine about how she was _sooooo clooooose_ to handling reports on the Vongola Tenth Gen or something else Squalo doesn’t care about.

He whips out his cellphone and dials her up. “Hey, Ore—”

“ _You kill your small child yet?”_

“No, I’m giving you your fucking report, you slavering harpy. Now if you would stop helping some baby yakuza suck his thumb—”

“ _I’m taking him to the boss, because he’s a_ delicate political asset _—”_

“Don’t care. Got a dead kid down here.”

“ _What?”_ There’s a sound of Oregano saying something soothing, and then the sound of snapping sticks. _“Anyone important?”_

“I don’t know, some Japanese guy. Looks like he’s got, uh…” Squalo toes the body. The kid’s arm does something unpleasant. “Chronic ‘got thrown through five metres of stone floor’ syndrome. Super fucking dead.”

“ _Any sign of the Bambino Beelzebub?”_

Squalo rolls the body over to reveal several familiar little cords. “Well, he was _here_. I’m heading back upstairs to wait him out. Keep watch on the entrances for me, and go tell that thing in the east wing his friend kicked it.”

“ _The…thing?”_

“Oh yeah, there was this brat over there just killing the shit out of one of the hires. I wanna say it’s human, but don’t hold me to it. Shouldn’t be too hard to take him in, moved like a drunk cat.”

“ _One thing after the other…”_

“Yeah, well, sorry for doing the thing you always ask me to. I’m off.”

Squalo snaps the phone closed just in time to see the corpse’s eyes are open.

He narrows his eyes. _Not_ dead. Severe brain damage? He sees a lot of blood.

Then the boy slowly, carefully gets up, and slumps onto the coffin.

Well, when opportunity strikes. “You see a tiny brat with vines out his ass around here?”

“Oh.” The kid looks around blearily. “He…man, he ditched. I must have passed out.”

Shit. “So who’re you?”

The kid frowns. “…I’m on vacation.”

“So you’re with the friend that thing in the east wing.”

“You mean Tsuna,” he says, with an unblinking confidence that proves their relationship. “He’s okay?”

“Well enough. Didn’t look all there, broke a few ribs. What were you doing with the Beelzebub?”

“The…vine kid? I think…He wanted me to light the ruin up. Everything went blue…he called it Aura.”

Squalo pauses. He doesn’t sound like he even knows what Flames even _are_. This doesn’t add up. How does some thief get farther with a civvie than the organization that inherited the land get with trained experts…?

“…What’s that on your head?”

“What’s what on my head?”

Squalo grabs the kid by the cheeks, hoists him up, and points his flashlight into his face. The kid squints at the bright light. “How long have you had that mark on your forehead?”

“I have a mark on my forehead?”

Christ. “ _Yes._ You got any theories?”

“Well, I did get shot?”

Squalo drops him.

“With a _dying will bullet_?”

“I don’t know. I felt pretty amped when I woke up, if it helps.” Takeshi massages his jaw.

“Where the _fuck_ did he get a dying will bullet?”

“I dunno. Can I go see my friends? They’re probably worried about me.”

“Shut the fuck up, I’m not done with you.” Squalo examines the site carefully. There’s an empty rack — must be where the sword came from — and a deep depression in the wall. Some sort of hidden panel. He steps closer and squints. It’s a painting, of…

_Proteggere Ieyasu._

The Vongola first generation. _The founding fathers._

His light eases over all of them, and stops dead at the left-hand corner.

“… _No_.”

“Oh, do you recognize one of them?” The boy asks from behind him. “Is it the blond one? I feel like Hibari would be the type of guy to know an Italian man with a sword hand.”

Squalo whirls on him. “Do _you_ recognize them?”

“Uhm…well, they don’t look alike, you know. Like at all. But…” He opens his mouth, closes it, and just shakes his head and waves generally. “The one with a rat tail, and the rich one, I don’t know them. Everyone else, yeah. One of them is me. I think. Is that like my great-great-great grandpa? Is that why?”

“That can’t...” Squalo looks at the painting, then down at the brat, pieces slowly falling together. “What did you say your friend’s name is?”

“Sawada Tsunayoshi. He’s very small,” the boy says earnestly.

This just gets better and better.

Squalo works his jaw.

“…Hey. You.”

“My name’s Yamamoto Take—”

“Don’t care. I’m going to strike a deal with you. You get to keep the sword as long as you don’t tell anyone about the painting.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah. Kids love cool swords, right?”

The boy laughs. “My dad has this old dojo, he’s going to be _stoked._ ”

“Good for him.” Squalo turns around and drives his foot hard enough into the frame to shatter it.

“ _Woah!”_

“Not a word!” Squalo tugs the painting out of the frame and rolls it up. “I’ll leave everyone else to find you, I’m going to see a man about some ice.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

“So I’m kinda caught between alien and some kind of government experiment,” Hayato concludes.

“Government experiment,” Hana says firmly. “He’s got that got that genetic mutation thing going on.”

“Don’t humour him,” Tsuna says.

“Sshh. So, this Gi U kid—”

“You _know his name_?”

“SSSHHH!” She swats Hayato. “So, this Gi U kid, is he like…deadly?”

“He’s killed people, but he’s not a fighter. If he lasted long enough, Yamamoto’s probably fine.”

“No, I mean like…is he _poisonous_?”

Hayato makes an excited little _‘ooh’_ sound. Tsuna tries very hard to ignore both of them.

The body is a vague lump hidden behind the dirt hill that they all quietly agreed to not look at, but there’s enough blood on the floor to guarantee that he’s dead. The katana is lying on the floor halfway across the room, though, so Tsuna is a little curious about how he pulled it off.

The glowstick is still being put to use even after leaving the wing. The unpleasant prickly feeling is gone, and with it, all the lights. Thankfully, the doors are all still open, and it’s a quick trip to the room they were being held captive in.

The entire floor is gone, now. All of it. It’s just a hole where a room used to be.

“Hmmm,” says Tsuna.

It’s not quiet down there. Tsuna takes a few steps back and waits patiently. Sure enough, the long-haired assassin man pulls himself out of the hole and regards them all coolly. Tsuna blinks up at him.

“Nothing to see here,” says Squalo.

“Okay. Is my friend down there?”

“Yeah, he’s doing alright. The suits will scrape him off the floor for you.”

Tsuna gets a sudden, viscerally unpleasant flashback, of something similar being said by this very man. He looks at his hands in slowly dawning horror.

“…Do you just turn that on and off?”

“We’re still trying to figure it out. Just treat him like he’s a useless loser, you’ll be right 90% of the time,” Hana tells him.

“Yeah, he looks useless. Hey. _Tiny_.” Squalo kicks Tsuna in the shins, bringing him out of the memory just in time to see the finger pointed at his nose. _“Stay out of the mafia or I’ll kill you.”_

“…Can do, sir.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Then he takes off.

They all stand around the hole awkwardly, until Hana gently sits down and leans over.

“ _ **TAKESHI-KUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!”**_ She shouts.

Silence.

“ _YEAH?”_

A flood of relief hits Tsuna like a wave, and he sinks down to the floor too.

“YOU WANT A GLOWSTICK?”

“ _IT’S OKAY, MY SWORD GLOWS!”_

“YOUR WHAT?”

“ _THE GUY WITH THE HAIR GAVE ME A SWORD!”_

“AWESOME!”

“ _RIGHT? MY DAD IS GOING TO BE STOKED!”_

“This was a terrible vacation,” Tsuna says.

 

* * *

 

“Uh-Oh,” Kunihiro says as the helicopters start swooping in.

“Going to take responsibility now?” Mukuro spits.

“Haha, no way, I can’t even get into position now. Maybe because you’re a slow sack of migraine.” Kunihiro pulls him onto the boat moored in the curve of the beach and hops in himself. “Boy, that’s a lot more CEDEF than I’m designed to handle.”

“Were you designed to handle _any_ level of CEDEF?”

“Kinda. I tried to kill their boss once.”

Mukuro laughs.

“Trust me, your resentment of mafia is perfectly justified, and I don’t want to deal with _any_ of that without the upper hand.” Kunihiro gets the engine going after a few pulls. It’s a tiny little motorboat, and rocking precariously. “You wanna give us some cover? Just a cloak.”

Mukuro wrinkles his nose.

“I have jooouurnaaaaals,” Kunihiro sings.

The teenager lets out a put-upon sigh and flicks his fingers. The ghostly tickle of illusion coats the boat. Kunihiro feels a twinge of worry when Mukuro clutches his eye in pain, but it seems to be a brief backlash, and doesn’t last.

They get the hell out of there.

“…We’re not stopping in your little village,” Mukuro mumbles after they get far enough that the helicopters can’t be heard anymore. “I need to pick up my subordinates.”

“Yeah. You’ve got…” Kunihiro tries to put a name to the faces in Mukuro’s memory. “Dunno their names. All your little jail friends.”

“Mmm.”

“Hey, don’t fall asleep on me.” Kunihiro nudges Mukuro’s leg with his foot. “We’ve got about forty minutes to go.”

“I’m not sleeping,” Mukuro mutters.

“Diaries of Flame users,” Kunihiro encourages. “Family history records.”

“We’re going to Tokyo,” Mukuro says, firmly, a little more focused. “We’re going to Tokyo, so of course I’m going to stay awake.”

“Hey, sounds good.” Kunihiro leans back and looks over the water as the scenery rushes by. “…Hhaaa. Dad’s going to kill me.”

  
  


* * *

 

 

The nice blonde woman who helped Haru comes back with a boy in her arms. There’s a jacket draped over his head.

“No fatalities,” she calls to the boss man. “There was a scare, but the rest of the kids are fine. They’re waiting in the ruins for a pickup. Careful, one of them may be hostile.”

“Thank god,” Boss Man mutters under his breath. He starts calling out to the rest of them to move in.

The woman rushes up to Haru and sits the boy down next to her. “Hey there, could you watch over this boy for me? He’s your age. If you want to know anything, just ask him a few questions. I don’t think he’ll be comfortable talking to us.”

“Oh! Okay!” Haru is going to be useful! This is great!

“Thank you _so_ much. I’ll ask about it later.” She opens her phone and dials a number. After a few seconds, she starts shouting something that sounds very mean and very Italian into the phone.

Haru turns to the boy. “So what’s going on?”

“A bunch of Italian men want to kill us all.”

“Oh.” Haru turns back to the street, fiddling with her can of coffee milk. “Okay.”

The boy is silent.

Haru quickly pulls out her phone and dials her sister. “Nee-chaaaan?”

“ _Haru!_ Everything okay?”

“Yeah, everyone’s been really nice to me. The boss guy gave me guards. They’re going to go check stuff out now. I think a bunch of Italian terrorists came into town? Are these guys interpol? Are you going to jail?”

“No, sweetheart, they’re criminals.”

“Oh, good…One lady brought in a boy, he’s really upset. But it looks like everyone survived.”

“Whew. They weren’t answering their calls, I was getting nervous. Thank you soooo much, Haru-chaaaan. Why don’t you go wait inside just in case?”

“Oh, okay. Talk to you later!”

Haru looks up at the burly guy next to him. “Can I wait inside anywhere?”

“We’re using the hotel, right now. I’ll walk you in.”

“Okay!” Haru takes the boy’s hand and starts walking. “I’m Miura Haru, by the way.”

“…Oogawa Miki.”

“Can I call you Miki-kun?”

“…Do what you want.”

“Okay, Miki-kun. Ooh, they have coconut water. Have you had coconut water before?”

“…No…”

“Well, then we obviously gotta try it! Come on!”

The boy slumps, but doesn’t argue.

Man, cheering this guy up is going to be hard.

 

* * *

 

By the time the officers come to pick Tsuna and his friends up, Tsuna has given his shirt a healthy scrub, Hana has gotten the chance to go pee, They’ve decisevely determined that there’s no way of getting Takeshi out of the hole, and they’ve cleared all the information up between them.

A man named Romolo Zeni hired several men to help him fight the Vongola off while he looked for the magic swords in Asari’s grave, including Gi U, the master thief.

They were using the yakuza to scare off civilians so they couldn’t be spied on.

Yamazaki scared them off, and the yakuza wanted out.

But Zeni wanted to pin the blame for the whole situation on Gi U, and the only way to do that once the yakuza aren’t cooperating is to kill them all.

And the mafia has a lot of magic.

“So why don’t we tell them that Zeni did it?”

“That’s not a good idea,” Hayato said.

“Why not?”

“Romolo Zeni isn’t just an influential scumbag, he’s a powerful one. They call him _immortal_.” He bowed his head. “…To be honest, I don’t think anyone in Vongola besides the ninth himself could even hurt him.”

“…Oh.”

The men in suits, more polished and straight-backed than the ones who wanted them dead, showed up, and Tsuna looked at the dried blood all over his hands and had the weirdest feeling that they were still wet, somehow.

He needs a shower.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> END OF ARC 2….FINALLY…
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who stuck around through the slow updates and constant edits. This arc was reeeaaaally ambitious, and suffered from doing to many things at once, but the last time I tried to shelve ideas the plot fell apart. Miyazawa is bloated and complex, but the flow's still better. The Homestuck Method, if you will.


	22. A Point of View - The Record Of Yamazaki Kunihiro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IIIIIT'S OC TIME! Who's ready for PRE-CANON BACKSTORY?
> 
> This also covers a huge portion of the secondary storyline based around the Akiyama-kai politics and the Kouyou family drama, but mostly sets up the Origin Story for a handful of the main cast. Everything probably makes more sense with this chapter's context in general.
> 
> This sucker's a long one, since it covers a lot more than just Yamazaki, and Yamazaki is a lot older than Gokudera to begin with. It also might be one of my best chapters so far?
> 
>  **Warnings** : SEVERE graphic violence towards a small child, domestic abuse, abusive parent, implied medical torture of a small child, death

  **-birth-**

* * *

 

Kouyou Kunihiro was born in the autumn of 1982, while the leaves of the Namimori mountain were still turning.

The Kouyou family is strongly attuned to the Flames of Will, but a baby is too young to properly make a diagnosis. Kunihiro had seven siblings, all of which were blessed with Sun, Sky, or in the case of his elder brother Naoki, a combination of the two. It seemed only natural to assume he was the same.

They were a splendid family. People would gravitate towards them naturally. Their influence was a kind and trusting one. Everyone in Hakuyou was Kunihiro’s family.

When Kunihiro was five, they found out he was a Storm.

It’s rare, and all too uncommon in their branch of the family; no one had expected it. It made him Other to them. His mother, patiently and diligently managing all of his siblings, suddenly started looking over him with eyes like ice.

No one had much time for him after that.

But even so, even so, everyone in the village is his Family.

* * *

  **-caretaker-**

* * *

 

“Nee-saaaaan,” Kunihiro called through the house. He almost sprinted inside, but Naoki held him firmly by the collar. Even though most of the family didn’t want to waste their attention on Kunihiro, Kunihiro had already cursed Naoki with his perpetual presence, and their relationship as siblings came out mosly unscathed.

Besides, Naoki seems to enjoy having someone to lord his superiority over, as nine-year-olds are wont to do.

Kunihiro is only six, now, so he has to be babysat. Izumi Nana just finished high school, so she has plenty of time to do it, and the family pays her well for her services. Kunihiro loves Nana. She’s soft and warm and an excellent cook. She also has the family sneakiness; she has a skill for tricking Kunihiro into doing things he otherwise wouldn’t.

He finds in her bedroom, carefully applying make up in front of a mirror.

“Nee-san, whatcha doin’?” He asks loudly.

She jerks and turns to look at him. Even her hair is done up. “O-Oh, nothing. Just practicing taking care of my appearance!”

“Oh.” Kunihiro blinks at her, and looks around. “Where’s granny?”

“Mom’s out shopping. She said she’ll be back in an hour.” Nana smoothed out her clothes. “Now, who wants to try finger painting?”

Kunihiro loved Nana the most.

* * *

  **-responsibility-**

* * *

 

There’s a blond man in the main hall today.

Kunihiro has been staring at him for the better part of an hour.

He’s dressed in a suit, and his hair is close-cropped. He looks kind of sweaty. Kunihiro doesn’t like him much. His eyes graze over the rough callouses on the man’s tanned fingers, and he wonders what kind of job he has.

Naoki comes in with shopping bags and stops dead when he catches sight of them. “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m here for a meeting,” the man says politely.

“I understand.” Naoki shuffled across the room — he’s still not used to the balance of his new geta — and gives Kunihiro the bags. “Put these in the kitchen,” he whispers.

Kunihiro makes a face.

Naoki ignores it and turns back to the blond man. “I’m the heir to the family. If you’d like, you may brief me on anything you wish to tell our father.”

Kunihiro thinks that he won’t get briefed, because Naoki is only ten years old. He saunters into the kitchen with the bags anyway. The cook snatches them out of his hands, tuttering something about burning them, which is silly. They may know what Kunihiro’s aspect is, but it’s not like he can _use_ it. He hasn’t even started training his Aura yet.

He _wishes_ he could use it. He’d make big fireballs, like _ka-foom, ka-foom_ …

When he gets back to the main room, the man has a distant look on his face. Naoki turns to Kunihiro with glowing orange eyes.

Naoki could already use his Flames when he was Kunihiro’s age. He had to.

He had a responsibility.

“Father will meet you shortly,” Naoki says.

“I see,” the man replies, still distant.

Kunihiro has never been responsible for anything.

* * *

  **-love-**

* * *

 

The blond man is here because of the mafia.

His master is talking with someone else, right now, and he’s here to discuss the details until she gets back. The mafia wants their members to go to Japan when they want to retire, so no one will hurt them.

Kunihiro’s immediate family has to be in attendance, because his father runs the family and this is a family issue.

It’s supremely boring. Kunihiro almost falls asleep twice.

Naoki keeps his siblings — both older and younger — entertained by using his eyes to pull the man’s mind back and forth. The man would ask a question, Naoki would ask another question using his eyes, the man would instinctively answer, and then forget about it, as well as the original question.

In the end, no matter how much he tried to press, he could only manage to wrestle an agreement that only retired operatives may stay in the greater Namimori area, and there is to be no checkups without call for emergency. Any information on the operatives goes through the Akiyama-kai first.

When the man leaves, their father smiles down at Naoki. “You did well, today.”

Naoki blushes and smiles down at his lap, bowing slightly. “Thank you, father.”

Kunihiro buries his face in his arms. He’s never been responsible for anything.

* * *

  **-romance-**

* * *

 

It’s summer when Junko gets married.

It’s a celebration, and everyone is happy. There’s a buffet table, and dancing, and crying, and Junko wears the most beautiful dress Kunihiro has ever seen. Junko is the eldest sibling at twenty, and she’s vibrant in her youth. The entirety of Hakuyou attends. There’s a lot of couples kissing. Naoki has to park Kunihiro next to him at all times to keep him from running off. Kunihiro often veers towards something, only to get an arm around the stomach or a hand around the wrist.

“ **Stay put,”** Naoki tries with his eyes, but Naoki grew up using those eyes on Kunihiro, and it only lasts for about a minute before something new attracts Kunihiro’s attentions and he tries to take off again.

Nana is here, in a sundress with her hair done up in a bun with beads in it. She’s giggling over the wine, talking to someone. Kunihiro cranes his neck to see.

It’s the blond man.

“What’s he doing here?” Kunihiro practically shouts.

“What? Who?” Naoki follows his gaze, and frowns when he sees the man, which is comforting. “…Stay here.”

Kunihiro, naturally, does not.

Naoki greets the blond man warmly, and shakes his hand with a firm grip. His pale, soft palm is tiny in the man’s tanned, enormous grip.

“It’s a pleasure to see you here,” Naoki lies. “What brings you?”

“I’m on a date!” He exclaims, wrapping an arm around Nana’s shoulders.

Kunihiro has never been more angry.

He spends the rest of the reception clinging to Nana’s skirts and glaring daggers at the man, not noticing the atmosphere slowly become more tense around Junko and his older siblings, around their father.

The man she married isn’t from Namimori, and that bothers them quite a bit.

A week later, Junko realizes she’s pregnant.

A week after that, she disowns the family and moves to the downtown area, threatening an escape to Korea.

It was the first time Kunihiro was ever confronted with the idea of his family not staying intact forever.

* * *

  **-Namimori-**

* * *

 

Naoki is like the glue that keeps the family together, sometimes.

He brings Kunihiro to visit Junko at her new house, often, and helps her husband renovate it while Kunihiro falls asleep with his ear to Junko’s belly, hoping for kicks.

“It’s too early for that,” she laughs, but he’s resolute. He’s going to be an uncle.

Naoki takes Kunihiro to get hot drinks afterwards, and they walk through the town on their way back home. They always walk through the forest, even in winter. It’s just how it’s done, for the main family. On the way, Naoki stops at the middle school.

“After elementary, this is where we go to school,” Naoki carefully explains. “Our family owns it.”

Naoki wrinkles his nose at the run-down building. “What about the other one? It looks nicer.”

Naoki’s face goes carefully blank. “You’re not going there.”

“But—”

“ _You’re not going there.”_

And so they walk home.

* * *

  **-power-**

* * *

 

Naoki shivers a lot, but Kunihiro’s been carefully practicing his Aura training, and Storms run hotter than Suns, regardless of literal interpretations. He burns like a little heater. Sometimes his siblings will kidnap him and stick him under the table whenever the kotatsu is full.

Naoki learned how to use his Flames when he was Kunihiro’s age, and now that Kunihiro can control his Aura to this extent, he thinks he ought to learn too. During the night, when everyone is sleeping, he sneaks out of his room. He may be ignored by most of the family, but he’s still the leader’s son, and he’s still doted on by the heir. He knows a lot more than your average clan child ought to.

The lights in the meeting hall are still lit. He slows down in front of them.

“ _You let your child break away from us! A Sky, breaking away from out family! Are you mad?”_

“ _We already have a Sky to lead us when I pass. I have another Sky child, and so do you. What’s left to be concerned about?”_

“ _Your leniency is reckless. The outside world is crawling into our home. Even the Izumi family—”_

Kunihiro quickly tip-toed past the door, feeling oddly queasy.

He finds the storage room easily enough, hidden in a closet panel. Treasures, Wicks, collected over generations, none of which Kunihiro is designed to use. His siblings will all pick one when they come into their powers.

He runs his fingers over bangles and bracelets, rosaries and beads, feeling them respond only to the energy crackling in the air. Nothing but Sun. He tears open cupboards, drawers, boxes, crates. Opens plastic baggies and tiny purses. All of them respond to a Flame type different from his own. A lot of Rains, designed for the Tsukioka branch; Kunihiro pauses over a letter-opener, wondering what aspect Nana has. Granny Izumi used to be in the Tsukioka.

He replaces it and keeps digging.

It feels like hours until he finds a box hiding an entire altar, coated with a thick layer of dust. Kunihiro doesn’t know what Storm flames look like, other than _red_ , so he doesn’t know what to make of the fire-esque gold framework around the thing. In the middle is a small box. He blows the dust off, and erupts into a coughing fit as the whole thing blasts into his face.

When he can breathe (through his shirt), he open the lid with one hand.

Inside, set in a velvet case, is an arrowhead.

He tries to pry it out, but it comes away in two; a broken arrowhead, which is probably why the altar is in storage instead of out on display. Still, it looks important. Kunihiro’s brow furrows as he tries to focus his energy into it.

Each half of the red gem inlaid into the arrowhead pieces glows, responding to his aspect. Excited, he puts even more energy into it.

Nothing happens.

Kunihiro falls to the floor, dejected, but not too surprised. Just because _Naoki_ can do it doesn’t mean _he_ can. Junko is older than all of them, and she can barely keep her Aura steady. Kunihiro is _seven._

Still. He really thought he was going somewhere with this.

With a sigh, he stuffs the box into his shirt and crawls back into the closet, making a wide circle around the meeting room on his way back to bed.

* * *

  **-marriage-**

* * *

 

Nana gets married in spring.

Her surname isn’t Izumi anymore. Granny Izumi cusses up a storm and refuses to attend.

The atmosphere is tense, and this time Kunihiro knows it. His father is here, even though he really doesn’t have to be, probably in apology that Nana’s own mother won’t come to her wedding. He gives her away to her new husband, in place of Nana’s father, who couldn’t be assed to attend, just like he couldn’t be assed to be in her life to begin with.

“Stop fidgeting,” Naoki whispers, placing a soothing hand on Kunihiro’s back.

They have a western wedding, just the kind Kunihiro’s family hates, at the husband’s behest. An old gramps congratulates him during the reception, and he radiates Sky like a gravitational pull. Naoki puts out his own Aura as strong as he can as a result, and uses his eyes to say things like _**“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir”**_. Kunihiro nervously does the same, so hard that the arrowheads in his pockets feel hot and the old man’s skin sizzles slightly when they shake, and comes away blistered. Naoki pinches Kunihiro’s ear as punishment.

The rejoicing continues. A group of Nana’s friends swarm around her, squealing congratulations. A toddler slaps the husband hard on the back like a proud mother. Kunihiro’s older brother, Aosuji, makes nice with the husband with warm yet cutting words. Junko even gives Nana a hug, while Mr. Oogawa lets Kunihiro hold their baby Miki. Kunihiro rocks him gently and makes cooing noises. Miki sticks his tiny baby fingers up his nose. Kunihiro holds the baby’s wrist in his mouth for about ten minutes before Junko finally catches him at it, and she pinches Kunihiro’s ear as punishment. A toddler in a fedora shakes Kunihiro’s hand and doesn’t let go until their palms sizzle like they did with the old man, and then the baby lets go and his palm is perfectly intact, which is probably the scariest thing Kunihiro has seen in his seven-and-three-quarters years of living. Naoki uses his eyes on the toddler and gets a nosebleed for his trouble. Their dad laughs in his face when they tell him what happened, but still pinches Naoki’s ear as punishment.

Kunihiro’s mom hadn’t attended either wedding. She claimed that her precious family was marrying into _poison_. Kunihiro doesn’t care much for what his mom has to say, but he thinks she might be right in this case.

The bride and groom cut the cake together, gazing into each other’s eyes as they do so. Kunihiro watches them feed each other with a morose sort of emptiness.

During dinner, he’s seated next to Naoki who is seated next to their father, so Kunihiro leans forward. “Aren’t you worried about her marrying into mafia?”

“It’s good for politics,” their father answers patiently, “and neither are in positions of influence. Eat your cake.”

Kunihiro eats his cake.

During the dancing section, after the first dance, Kunihiro finally gets to spend time alone with Nana. He’s so much shorter than her that it’s almost impossible to take the lead gracefully. She giggles at his efforts.

“Are you going to have a baby?” He asks.

She hums. “My, I hope so. I am _ever_ so good with children, after all.”

The emptiness in Kunihiro’s chest deepens. “Are you going to leave Hakuyou too?”

“Hiro-kun,” she says softly, “I’d never leave you.”

In the end, it’s a lie. She has a fight with her mother, and moves back into Namimori, on the other side of town from Junko. She doesn’t disown her family, but it’s a close thing.

Kunihiro finds himself at home less and less, no longer waiting on Naoki to take him through the forest trail, just so he can see his sister and Sawada Nana as often as he can.

If his family can’t stay intact by itself, he’ll force it to.

* * *

  **-exercise-**

* * *

 

Being pregnant is more stressful on Nana than it was on Junko.

The difference, Kunihiro thinks, is that Junko spent her childhood concentrating her willpower, so her body is healthy and hearty. Nana is just a normal civilian woman, who never had any sort of training.

So when she starts doing yoga exercises to help with her muscles, he adds in Aura-strengthening exercises too. She thinks it’s meditation. Kunihiro tries to use the same power that his family uses to find out aspects, but it looks like you need to be a Sky to do that.

“You should do this with Junko-nee-chan,” Kunihiro mildly suggests.

Junko raises a suspicious eyebrow when they show up, but she does these for fatigue anyway, and often, since Miki is colic and keeps the family up and stressed out at all hours.

“Deep breaths,” Junko tells Nana, “let it wash over you like the rain.”

Nana is too old to get a good grip on her Aura, and too present-minded to sum up the willpower to manifest something strong — a lot like Junko, in earnest — so she doesn’t respond as well as Kunihiro would like. But Junko is a Sky, and has a Sky’s judgement.

Rain.

Rain that washes away everything, he thinks. It suits Nana.

While they exercise, Kunihiro helps coddle Miki to give Mr. Oogawa a breather. Miki likes Kunihiro’s constant warmth, and puts his chubby fingers all over his face while Mr. Oogawa does the dishes in peace.

“Can you come here forever?” He jokes.

Kunihiro smiles thinly and lets Miki tug his hair.

* * *

  **-Sawada-**

* * *

 

“He’s in the mafia, you know,” Kunihiro blurts, cheeks hot and heart hurting, as he looks at Nana sitting alone in her hospital bed. They haven’t given her baby back yet.

“The mafia,” she says in wonder. “My. You think that’s why he was going to your house so often?”

“That’s probably the only reason he was in Japan at all.”

“Oh. _My_. That’s wonderful.”

“How?”

“Well, just think. He loves me so much he’d leave the mafia to be with me!” She sighs, and her smile droops slightly. “…He must be under such terrible stress right now, wherever he is.”

“He should be here with you.”

“I know. Which is why I’ll give him an earful if he isn’t here to pick me up from the hospital. But it’s okay, we have a name.”

“Really?”

“Yes…the Sawada men have a tradition of Tokugawa names, so I think it’s for the best if we keep it up. _Tsunayoshi_. Isn’t that a cute name?”

“Granny Izumi’s gonna be mad at you.”

“My mom can keep quiet about things that aren’t her business,” Nana says sharply, folding her arms. “It’s my baby, my rules.”

Naoki bursts into the room an hour later, breathing heavy and furious. “I’ve been looking _everywhere_ for you! You were missing all night!”

Kunihiro tries to look innocent and avoids eye contact with Nana, who is already radiating sternness. “Nana went into labour. It was an emergency.”

“SHE HAS A PHONE! Th _e HOSPITAL_ has a phone! I _seriously_ doubt she was in labour for SIXTEEN HOURS STRAIGHT!”

Kunihiro sticks his tongue out.

Naoki pulls at his ears, and Kunihiro squeals in pain.

Nana laughs, and pulls the bundle away from her chest. “This is Tsunayoshi. Would you like to see him?”

Naoki pauses, flushes, and nods curtly. Carefully, he reaches over Kunihiro’s back and pulls away the blankets. He recoils with a start.

“But…” He whispers.

“Isn’t he beautiful?”

Naoki doesn’t answer.

* * *

  **-family-**

* * *

 

“ _WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK?”_

Nana’s husband doesn’t know Kunihiro is still in their house, yet. He lays on the floor and stares at the ceiling. The wood under his hands crackles and pops, like it’s burning without heat.

“I thought you’d _trust_ me,” Nana yells back.

“I want to! But look at him! How else am I supposed to interpret this?”

“I would _never_ —”

“Then _HOW?_ ”

Silence.

The door slams.

Kunihiro slowly gets up, sucks in a breath through his nose, and tip-toes down the stairs, just in case. Halfway down, Tsunayoshi starts crying. He picks up speed, and plucks him from his play-crib to soothe him, rocking him back and forth. He steps quietly into the kitchen, to Nana slumped against the table, sobbing quietly.

“Nee-san,” he whispers.

“Go home, Kunihiro,” she wails.

“But the housekeeping—”

“Go home,” she says, louder, lifting her tear-stained face to look at him. “I can do it myself. I just need to be alone, _please_.”

Kunihiro hesitates, lip trembling. He places Tsunayoshi in his chair and nods. “G’night.”

She just slumps back onto the table.

Kunihiro feels hatred like he never has before.

* * *

  **-care-**

* * *

 

It feels like it’s taking forever to turn eight. It’s taking forever to get taller. Kunihiro waits in the lobby of the realty office, arms folded over his knees, fuming. They won’t even tell him where the Peach Association offices are. Losers.

Naoki and their father finally come in through the front doors. Kunihiro sits up.

“Kunihiro? I thought you were going to take care of Nana-san’s house until we got back,” Naoki wonders.

Kunihiro gives a one-shouldered shrug. “She wanted to be alone.”

Naoki and their father share a meaningful look. Kunihiro’s hatred sparks hot when he realizes that they both already knew that this would happen. That they’d fight. Naoki probably knew the moment he saw Tsunayoshi’s hair colour.

“Kunihiro,” Naoki chastises. He pulls Kunihiro away and frowns at the way the cushion has collapsed into little more than loose threads and thin stuffing so light it’s blown away by the simple act of getting closer. “Look at this. You’ve ruined the seats.”

“S’not my fault,” Kunihiro sniffles.

Their father comes closer and clasps a strong, large hand on Kunihiro’s shoulder. “You’re strong, Kunihiro. You’ve got enough power to rival some of your uncles, just like Naoki does. But you need to use it responsibly.”

Kunihiro pinkens at the unfamiliar praise, and nods sullenly.

“Now, I’m going to go talk with the uncle over here, and we can go home.”

Their father leaves for the back. Kunihiro looks up at Naoki.

“…Nii-san.”

“Hm?”

“D’you think…if a family member’s in pain, it should be our responsibility to help them?”

“What? Of course it is.”

Kunihiro stares at his toes.

“No matter how much it takes?”

“I’m not sure why you even bother asking. You never hold back.” Naoki sighs and walks to the desk. “But yes, that too.”

Kunihiro takes off before his brother can stop him.

* * *

  **-suffering-**

* * *

 

Kunihiro knows what the mafia is like.

They grew, breathed, and slept in the same bed as the common criminal, putting on a face of conflict while cooperating in the same breath. There’s a kind of evil in Europe, he knows, where you don’t smother cruelty and conflict, you let it grow in different places. That place is diseased. Kunihiro could never allow Nana to move in the same space for the sake of a husband who would rather scream for some perceived slight than talk to her. For the sake of a husband who isn’t even home.

_Never._

“I don’t know _what_ ta believe!” Iemitsu whines drunkenly.

Kunihiro sits on the roof of the bar, winding string around his middle finger, watching the entrance with his peripheral vision.

“Blood tests,” his friend soothes, just as drunk. “Go n’ apologize to yer wife, yeah? And get that blood done.”

“It’s black,” Iemitsu hisses. “You know it ‘aint…she had to have that baby during the…the honeymoon, yeah? But it’s black.”

“What if she dyes her hair?”

“She doesn’t. She showed me baby pictures. She was the cutest baby.”

“Get the blood done. ‘Aint no way a wonderful woman like that is cheatin’, y’hear?”

“Mm’guess,” Iemitsu mumbles.

They separate. Kunihiro follows Iemitsu, still on the rooftops. He’s sloppy in his drunkenness and distress. Another string around another finger, tightened with teeth. The cold metal bites into his wrist, and his hands feel numb. He pulls his sleeves over the arrowheads fixed to the top of each forearm, and resists flaring his Aura to keep away the chill of the night air. If his nosing around is right, Iemitsu is probably a Sky, and thus a sensor.

When Iemitsu turns onto a residential street, Kunihiro falls back, and keeps his posture flowing and quick.

When he was very, very young, their mother instructed her children on hand-to-hand combat, working through their kata meticulously. Kunihiro didn’t progress much past the basic framework they did as morning exercise when they found out his aspect, and any advancement past that was done in the form of copying Naoki and then letting Naoki angrily correct him, but with the sheer power he has…

…And their family has always been terribly frank with them about the necessity of the occasional death. It’s likely why Junko left.

Kunihiro slides down noiselessly from the wall to hide behind a lamppost. Iemitsu shows no sign of noticing him. Kunihiro takes one step in the crisp golden light of the lamp, another, and then rushes forward colder than he’s ever felt.

Then he ignites like a torch and his hands are engulfed in a blinding crimson Flame.

Iemitsu deflects in a daze, not even trying, but his sleeve falls to pieces in the effort. There’s no recognition in his eyes; Kunihiro is wearing a balaclava that hides the characteristic apple-red of his hair, as well as a black sweatsuit to block out the rest.

Kunihiro swings a fiery leg, and Iemitsu dodges this time, aware of the danger even while drunk. Without pausing, Kunihiro drags the blade of one of the arrowhead halves across the side of his hand, and swipes in the illusion of a punch.

The blood sprays over Iemitsu’s front, and he lets out a gutteral scream as it eats into his skin.

Kunihiro brings a knee up. It’s caught, and Kunihiro’s trouser leg and Iemitsu’s hand burn in the half-second they’re connected. Kunihiro comes up with his other leg, and cuts right through Iemitsu’s other sleeve with his foot, his shoe evaporating into nothing as he does so.

“That can’t be healthy,” Iemitsu mutters, touching his chest, like he just realized what Kunihiro was doing.

Kunihiro grabs the exposed skin of Iemitsu’s arm and _burns_. He’s almost out of energy, now, but he can’t allow it.

Never never _never never._

He can never let his family hurt like that.

And then Iemitsu’s forehead lights up like an orange pyre, and without a flicker of Aura around his body, he hoists Kunihiro up, untouched by the blaze that should be eating through him, and sends him into the nearest wall so hard the whole thing collapses around him.

It’s not something Kunihiro’s body was designed to withstand. The Japanese Flame doctrine is designed differently than the European one; full-body defense takes away from sheer specialized power.

The throw would have liquified the organs of an ordinary human as it is. In his case, with his Flames reinforcing his blood, his entire body goes numb, and the sound of collapsing rubble mixes in with the gristly crackle of several bones shattering.

Kunihiro falls to the ground, insensible if it weren’t for the sheer hostile power of his Will. He can’t move. He can’t breathe. He can’t anything. His breath comes in thin, wet, and dragging.

Iemitsu pulls off the balaclava and cusses.

He was only seven.

* * *

  **-loneliness-**

* * *

 

“Kill him.”

“We’re not going to execute a member of the Vongola for self-defense against a stranger.”

“He’s not technically Vongola. Kill him.”

Not even a shattered spine could withstand the combined Will of about 29 Sun/Sky types, and Kunihiro came out of the tussle mostly intact. The Sky had to take primary; no amount of Sun can cure injuries the body isn’t designed to heal, and trying would force him to carve about ten years off his lifespan. Since the Suns couldn’t heal everything, he has to spend the next six months as a human bruise as he’s slowly pulled back together. His bones may as well be made out of rice paper, and he’s to be hospitalized for most of the healing process.

None of the injuries are permanent, beyond the fact one of his lungs is going to age ten times faster than the rest of his body because of the immediacy of the injury. Iemitsu is a practical man, and knew enough about sucking chest wounds to keep his lungs working long enough to get him back to Hakuyou, but it was the injury that was _extra_ killing him, so it got all the Sun Flames.

The head trauma was negligible; reinforcing of the body or not, it is damn near impossible to give a Flame user brain damage no matter _what_ you do, especially when their Flames are active. Their grey matter may as well be titanium.

Still, ‘lame lung and 6 months in a hospital’ is the scariest thing Naoki has had a close family member suffer, so he’s _furious_.

They’re keeping him in the basement levels of the hospital, with all the med student equipment and skeletons floating in giant sci-fi tubes. Kunihiro stares dispassionately at a jar full of pig fetuses.

“Naoki, this is a delicate situation. Your brother was trying to _kill_ him.”

“What does it matter what he was trying to do? What kind of bastard throws a _child_ through a _wall!”_

“Things work differently in Europe, it was an honest mistake. The kind of Flame Users he fights would have absorbed a hit like that.”

“ _Seven-year-olds?”_

Their father is trying to convince Naoki to calm down with uncharacteristic patience. Politicial-mindedness is important for an heir to understand.

Junko tries to barge into the room, and practically trips over Aosuji, who had collapsed after pumping every last ounce of his Will into Kunihiro’s body about two days ago and still hasn’t woken up. She carefully rolls him back onto the bedroll.

“What happened? Kunihiro vanished, Iemitsu’s gone, Nana’s a _wreck_ —”

“Sawada Iemitsu tried to kill Kunihiro,” Naoki bites, at the same time their father says “Sawada Iemitsu accidentally hospitalized your brother”.

“He _what?”_

Their father holds up his hand, and Naoki steps back with a livid look. “Kunihiro tried to kill him for some sort of perceived slight. Iemitsu mistook him for an assassin and struck back with force typical for a mafia hit.”

“An assassin? He’s _seven_.”

“As a powerful Flame User, he’s deadly, and significantly more psychologically developed than your average child. One comes to expect it in that environment.”

Junko opens and closes her mouth. Her eyes mist over. “It’s normal for them to have _child assassins?”_

“I’ve heard it’s quite the lucrative business in certain areas of China.”

“Oh my god.” Junko collapses against the wall. “Why would Kunihiro _do_ this?”

“To protect Nana-san, probably,” Naoki says coldly. “I say we should kill him. He’s already missing.”

Kunihiro’s body isn’t strong enough to support speaking, so he stays silent, ever-staring.

* * *

  **-breathe-**

* * *

 

Iemitsu is released from the Akiyama-kai prisons within the day. He returned to Nana with blood tests confirming Tsunayoshi’s parentage, thoroughly chastened in every conceivable way.

It was an honest mistake, so they ban him from Hakuyou and not much else.

Junko tries to be impartial and lets Miki crawl over Kunihiro’s bed whenever she visits. Kunihiro relishes the pain.

“I hate this world,” she whispers, under the hum of machines. “I hate that you live in it.”

Her, her family, and Naoki are the only ones who come to visit. Naoki once slides the split arrowhead into Kunihiro’s palm, polished to a beautiful sheen.

Iemitsu sends flowers and a curt, overly-professional apology letter, and Kunihiro burns it all.

* * *

  **-age-**

* * *

 

Kunihiro is banned from ever going to see Nana again.

He stays at Junko’s, mostly, playing with Miki, who has grown a lot since he was a baby. He can walk with something to hold onto and can say the basic framework of words — _‘mama’, ‘papa’, ‘no’,_ and _‘yeah’_ — and Junko finally has time to herself. Kunihiro is banned from going to see Nana, but he isn’t banned from Nana in of herself, so Kunihiro is invited to their little housewive’s club.

Mr. Oogawa works later hours, so there’s no use going in the early morning unless it’s to visit with Miki.

He never celebrated his eighth birthday. He spent it in the hospital by himself. Maybe everyone forgot.

* * *

  **-park-**

* * *

 

Kunihiro moves into middle school at twelve. It’s a filthy, ruthless place, but everyone defers to him. The only sibling there is Aosuji, in third year. He’s practiced more at reinforcing his Flames, careful to learn how to mix his blood-reinforcing technique with the European full-body coat. It feels like a clumsy waste of energy that goes against everything his family trained him into, but if it makes him less dead, he doesn’t care. He’s not about to die from something so slight as getting chucked through a wall.

At ten, the Kouyou children are integrated into Family matters, so Kunihiro does a lot of assessments and paperwork and bureaucracy stuff. It’s a good thing his school doesn’t assign homework, because he’d never have time for it; he’s rarely in Namimori anymore, and when he is, it’s in Hakuyou. The only person he sees with any sort of frequency for social matters is Naoki, who has five times as much responsibility, and is thoroughly run ragged with the stress of it on top of high school.

Eventually, Naoki’s stress feels like Kunihiro’s stress, so he kidnaps Naoki and takes him out to Kokuyou land so the two of them can actually unwind.

Kokuyou (Healthy) Land used to be a hospital for shady yakuza and retired mafia, coated in the sickly sweet ‘for fun!’ tourist trap to throw off the scent and explain away foreigners. Kunihiro spent his recovery in the better-equipped downtown Namimori hospital, so he’s enchanted by the difference. He’s not even sure most of the doctors have medical degrees, and all them — barring the surgeons — are in loud, fancy-looking scrubs. The doctors wear cloaks. It’s like they think they can pretend the hospital isn’t there if they dress it fancy enough.

Naoki buys them both fried squid, and they take a stroll through the massive glass zoo. The place started as a tourist-y cover-up, but it’s expanded in ways only the Kokuyou community could accomplish, and Naoki is pretty sure half of the visitors here are yakuza from other prefectures.

“They got something like this in Europe,” Naoki says through a mouthful of seafood. “They call it Mafia Land.”

“ _Mafia Land,”_ Kunihiro guffaws.

“To be fair to them, there’s no civilians allowed on Mafia Land.”

They spend the rest of the night in the theatre, watching a string of horror movies with unlimited tickets, courtesy of their hair colour, glowing apple and cherry red even in the near-blackness of a dimmed theatre. They just had to sit there, and no one touched them.

In the late evening, around midnight, they walk home along the trail with their breaths leaving ghost imprints on the air.

“What’s it going to be like once you take over?” Kunihiro asks.

“Exactly like it is now,” Naoki laughs. “You’re my little right-hand man, fool. It’s natural.”

* * *

  **-younger-**

* * *

 

Kunihiro takes over his school in second year, when Aosuji graduates. It’s kind of a right of passage.

He’s friendly with the teachers, and ruthless with disposing of any threats to his position. They think he coats his hands in acid, which is _almost_ right. You need your inner Aura trained to see Aura or Flames, so he could light up like a beacon and no one would be the wiser.

He’s still not allowed to touch Nami Middle. Wren property or whatever. He’s not sure Misosazai would actually care about the gang wars of children, but it’s none of his business.

He sees Tsunayoshi for the first time in years in the grocery store.

He’s small and thin and wearing a hilariously oversized coat that he’s practically drowning in. He supposes it’s supposed to be worn as a trenchcoat, but the arms dangle too much.

Nana scoops him up. “Kunihiro-kun! Goodness, you’ve gotten big! You haven’t seen Tsunayoshi in a while, have you?”

Kunihiro shakes his head.

“Would you like to hold him?”

Slowly, gently, Kunihiro takes Tsunayoshi and sits him in a supported straddle on his stomach. Tsunayoshi looks at him with a hilarious nose-wrinkled suspicion.

“Tsu-kun, this is your uncle.”

Tsunayoshi looks wide-eyed at his mother, then spaces out at Kunihiro. He picks at at his lip and says “Nice t’ meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Kunihiro says. “I knew you when you were a baby.”

“When I was older?” Tsunayoshi asks.

“Younger, Tsu-kun, things that happened to you earlier happened when you were _younger_ ,” Nana corrects.

“When you were younger?” Tsunayoshi asks Kunihiro.

Kunihiro smiles weakly.

“Yeah. When I was younger.”

* * *

  **-crime-**

* * *

 

“He still doesn’t come home,” Nana says over tea with Junko. Kunihiro watches them out of the corner of his eye as he plays hide-and-seek with Miki. Or is pretending to. Miki is clearly giggling behind the curtain.

“Aren’t you worried?”

“No. He led a life of _crime_ ,” Nana giggles. “Nothing better than tucking yourself away in an oil rig in some obscure country to rake in the money while you’re _in hiding_. That man from before, his boss, Timoteo-san? He’s quite good at handling this sort of thing. He’s visited us once or twice to make sure nothing’s happened. So diligent! He says Iemitsu is like a son to him. I trust him more than anything, you know?”

 _He’s lying,_ Junko doesn’t say. _He’s lying to you,_ Kunihiro doesn’t say.

“Does he ever come home?”

“Not on a schedule. About once a month, for a few days.” Nana takes a sip of her tea. “Such a hard worker. He sends me postcards. _Harder to track_. Isn’t that so romantic?”

 _No,_ Kunihiro doesn’t say, clutching his breast, just above his weak lung.

“Found you!”

Miki squeals.

* * *

  **-collapse-**

* * *

 

In Kunihiro’s first day in high school, Kokuyou Healthy Land shuts down.

“We just couldn’t supervise it,” their father tells them. “We never should have let other yakuza groups in.”

Something about bombs and diseases and medical licenses and civilians. A lot of things, all piled together. As much a mess as Kokuyou Land’s composition to begin with.

He helps the Momokyou-kai clear most of it out, and helps them build the new, quieter, more secret hospital out on the mountain. Naoki comes in to supervise, and looks terribly lost as he examined the tiny little clinic. Or maybe like he lost something.

“We need more people,” Naoki says when Kunihiro shakes him out of it. “See to it.”

Kunihiro sees to it.

* * *

  **-Flame-**

* * *

 

Kunihiro’s school gang — the old one from his middle school and the new ones from the high school — become the Ringokyoukai. They’re still young, and operate on the other half of Namimori’s downtown area, in the residential area. They don’t generally show up except on events like festivals; people pay them out to set up there now, seeing as the Momokyoukai is too small for the workload ever since it emptied into the new realty office.

Today’s festival has Miki running around, and then, quiet and timid boy that he is, running back again. Only to run away again when he sees something he likes. It’s incredibly nostalgic.

“Come now, let’s go see Kurokawa-san’s stand!” Junko coos. Miki bounces up and down, and waves his hands in a confusion at the crowd of people. Mr. Oogawa lifts him up onto his shoulders and takes him over. They had to go later at night since he didn’t get today off, but it seems they’re enjoying the night air just fine, and the fireworks aren’t out yet.

“Look at you,” Junko laughs, rejoining with Kunihiro. “Already a teenager. I remember when you came up to my waist.”

“Sure you want to associate with a biiiig scaaaary yakuza?” Kunihiro teases.

“Please. You wouldn’t hurt a serial killer if he were holding a baby.”

“Maaaybe not.”

“Gimme!” Miki squeals, waving his open hands at the stuffed animals hanging over the stand.

“You’ve got to win them first,” his father reminds him.

“I want it! Please pleeeaase! _**Please!**_ _ **Give! It!**_ _**To! Me!”**_

Kurokawa gives him the stuffed animal.

Junko freezes. Kunihiro narrows his eyes.

“O-Okay…time to prove that stuffed animal belongs to us! Don’t get that dirty, we might have to give it back,” Mr. Oogawa says in a rush. He sets up the gun with trembling hands. It takes him fifteen minutes to win the prize properly, and Miki squeezes it when he’s told he’s allowed to keep it.

“Kurokawa-san is so accommodating,” Junko says with quiet, brittle cheer.

“Yes.” Kunihiro’s gaze slides over to her. “He sure is.”

* * *

  **-eye-**

* * *

 

The next time Kunihiro shows up at Junko’s house, it’s with Naoki. They have the decency to do it on Mr. Oogawa’s day off.

“You have _no proof!”_ She screams. _“You’re not taking my son back there!”_

“Do you hate your family?” Naoki asks quietly.

“I hate what it makes you _do!_ I hate that he doesn’t even have a _choice!_ He could be _anything_ and he’d still be friends with you, be friends with _them,_ why do you have to make him!”

“Guiding Eyes are rare, Junko. It makes him second in line by default. They hold the Family together.”

“They can hold the town together! Civilians! Let him be a doctor or a cop or a teacher, please don’t do this to him, please, god _please!”_ Junko wails.

Kunihiro looks over through the screen door, at Miki playing with his father in the yard. Junko is ten years older than Naoki is. It’s strange to hear her collapse under his presence.

“Excuse me,” Kunihiro says. He slides out into the yard and gestures at the house with a tick of his head. “You can go argue with your wife if you want.”

Mr. Oogawa looks a little lost, but ultimately decides to pass Miki over. “Get him out of here if you can.”

“We’ll be back before dinner!”

Kunihiro takes him out into the forest for a walk. He decides to show him the clinic; if he’s got the family Eyes, going to the hospital is out of the question. Worst case scenario, the whole place could explode, and there’s nothing worse than an exploded hospital, in his opinion.

“Why are mommy and uncle fighting? Is it my fault?” Miki asks quietly.

“Not quite,” Kunihiro hums. “Your mommy hates everyone at home, especially people like your gran, but your uncle Naoki wants you to go home with us because you’re special.”

“I’m special?” Miki asks. “How?”

Kunihiro looks over his shoulder. Looks like he’s far enough from the house. He kneels down in front of Miki and grips him by the shoulders. “You have a very special power, Miki. A brilliant power, that makes you more amazing than anyone. It’s a power that only our family knows how to use, and we want to teach you to make it better. You could use it to do _anything_.”

Miki holds a hand self-consciously to his eye. He clearly knows the gist of that power is. “…Then why doesn’t mommy want…?”

“People like…like your gran, they aren’t very nice people. They want to teach you to do not-very-nice things.” Kunihiro smiles. “But she doesn’t want that, because you’re a very, very nice boy. But Naoki thinks that because you grew up such a nice, nice boy, he’ll protect you from everyone who wants to be mean to you.”

“Oh.”

Kunihiro shows Miki the hospital. He likes the helicopter the most.

* * *

  **-blood-**

* * *

 

“It’s bad enough we let some out-of-town mutt marry her out,” their mother spits, “but now they’re taking our abilities out of our own family? The very least she could do is move back into Hakuyou!”

Another meeting, another fight. Most of his siblings don’t have any real stock in this; the ones that grew up with Junko haven’t actually been keeping up with her, and Kunihiro has no doubt the only reason Naoki is still close to her is because Kunihiro is and she agreed with him about Iemitsu deserving to die.

And their mom is just their mom. No reasoning with her.

“Maybe he can move into Hakuyou when he finishes college and become a cop,” Kunihiro throws in. His eyes are about to roll into the back of his skull.

“Keep your filthy mouth _quiet!”_ She snaps.

“You’re not my real mom,” Kunihiro drawls back.

She strikes him across the face hard enough to send him reeling back. The table goes abruptly quiet.

“How _dare_ you…” She gasps.

“What’s wrong with you? To your _mother…_ ” Aosuji whispers.

There’s something wrong with Kunihiro, maybe. He’s got no problem pulling in middle-schoolers, but all he knows about Miki is hiding behind curtains and days on the beach and how happy, happy, _happy_ he is without the rest of Junko’s family fucking it up.

Their family fucks up so much. Why isn’t he allowed to love some of them without hurting others? He just likes all his family members and wants them together. Why does it have to be such a huge _problem_? What is it about adulthood and the outside world that makes people want to break off from the family like this?

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

“Then you can leave—”

“I’m sorry you’re still bitter dad won’t touch your crusty old pussy,” he says at the ceiling.

He’s never considered his mother to be anyone other than the woman who lives with him, so the broken arm still comes as a shock.

* * *

  **-burn-**

* * *

 

“That was stupid,” Naoki tells him later that night, mending Kunihiro’s arm slowly. Their father is the only one who can fix bones properly, but Naoki hasn’t even hit his mid-twenties yet. He’ll figure it out.

“I don’t know why anyone still listens to her!,” Kunihiro sighs. “It’s not the eighties anymore.”

“That was a personal attack.”

“What does it matter if I say something to make her pissed? She already hates me.”

“She doesn’t—”

“She does.” Kunihiro stretches his hand. “Ever since I got my aspect named. I may as well have a big red stamp labeled ‘illegitimate’ on my forehead.”

“You’ve got the hair.”

“The hell does the hair matter? I got my birther’s nose or some shit. She looks at me smelling a flower and loses her damn mind.”

Naoki lets out a weak huff of laughter and tightens the bandage around Kunihiro’s arm. “There. Don’t do anything strenuous for the next week.”

“Not even…” Kunihiro makes a pumping motion.

“You have two hands,” Naoki says dryly.

Kunihiro dances out of the room with a chuckle. He feels light and heavy at the same time. Even with the broken arm, he can’t really bring himself to regret saying anything. The room needed a little ice-breaker anyway, didn’t it? Their mother is such a war-hawk. He’s read old records; he knows the eighties were a shitshow. It’s not like her mentality is meaningless. He just doesn’t get wanting to _cling_ to that.

“Kunihiro,” a voice calls.

He stops and turns. “Aosuji?”

“Can you come here for a second?” His expression is grim in the shadows of the hallway.

“Uh. Sure?”

Aosuji doesn’t respond, just turns and walks. Kunihiro follows. He follows out of the building. He follows out of the yard. He follows out of the village. He follows until they stop at the beach where Kunihiro grew up.

His mother is there.

“…Did you want an apology?” Kunihiro asks, at a loss.

Her lips thin. She approaches him briskly, and with power. “You’ve been nothing but disrespectful.”

“I’ve been nothing but impatient,” he replies, eyes pulling away. “I think you’re pretty well disrespecting Junko too, y’know.”

“She is my _daughter._ I don’t need to _respect_ her. I deserve _her_ respect alone, and she’s thrown that in my face time and time again!”

Anger boils in the pit of Kunihiro’s stomach.

“So what.”

“You…you, you and Junko, you’re tearing this family apart.” Her voice shakes with rage. “Naoki is our greatest power and you’re poisoning him with your _vile_ behaviour.”

“I didn’t have to be vile to get looked over before,” Kunihiro mumbles bitterly.

“You never _listened,_ of course no one wanted to deal with you!” Aosuji argues. “Why are you planting discord every time we try to have a serious discussion? We just want to be _together!”_

“Excuse me? How about, why are _you_ planting discord? She _never_ would have left this family if it weren’t for you!” Kunihiro shouts. “You don’t want us together, you want to control us! You want things to go _your_ way! This isn’t a fucking matriarch! _Father’s_ the one in control, and that _pisses you off,_ doesn’t it? How dare he _love his children_.”

“Control? Is that what you think I have?” She tosses something in the sand. Glass crackles under Kunihiro’s slippers as he approaches to look closer.

It’s the velvet case the used to hold the arrowhead, currently wound into a necklace sitting against his chest.

“I don’t have control of people like you! A petty thief and a liar, cheating better siblings out of the care they need!”

“I’m the _leader’s son_ ,” Kunihiro says, bewildered. “I didn’t _steal_ anything. _All of us_ are supposed to get something out of that closet.”

“ _Not you,”_ she hisses.

That’s right. Not him. Kunihiro stares at her blankly. For his tenth birthday he was supposed to inherit something. He didn’t. He had gotten so used to his power that he hadn’t realized.

“Wh…Why _not?_ I’m my father’s son!”

“You’re _that woman’s_ child.”

“No! I’m NOT!” Heat roils under Kunihiro’s skin, and his eyes prickle. “I’m YOUR son! I’ve always been YOUR kid! I was raised by you! I lived with you my whole life! When we talk about mothers it’s always been _you!_ I don’t even _know_ who gave birth to me, she may as well be a lucky sex worker with a eight-month payout! I’m mad because I’m supposed to belong to _you_!”

“Why would I want you? You _never_ considered me your true mother!”

“Of course I did! But I _grew up!_ How am I supposed to call you my mom when you were _never there?”_ Thoughts fly through his head, each an argument desperate to get out — Flame users develop faster mentally, her ignoring him made it so easy for him to grow into that splintered relationship, she played favourites and made it obvious that he wasn’t loved and to look after her would to let that ache _burn,_ that she would prefer to see him break than suffer _not_ _ **getting her way**_

Kunihiro’s breath comes in short, and he blinks away the tears of stress. Aosuji takes a step forward.

“Give back the arrowhead, it’s not yours.”

“Were you jealous? That I didn’t let her break my self esteem?” Kunihiro lashes out blindly. “That I’m one of daddy’s favourites?”

“ _Give it back!”_

“You got one too! It’s not _my_ fault you suck a nut at using it!” His voice creaks with the strain of puberty. He stamps his foot, and it punches through the layer of glass into the sand. The edges scrape his ankle, and he’s never felt so _hot_. “It’s not _cheating_ that I _never failed as hard as you did!”_

Aosuji lifts a hand to strike him.

 _You almost killed yourself trying to save me_ , Kunihiro thinks.

He’s only sixteen.

* * *

  **-death-**

* * *

 

“What on earth are you doing?”

Kunihiro leans even farther over the boat. “You want the Cloud baby, right? Can’t kidnap anybody without information.”

“Do you have _X-ray vision,_ perchance?” Mukuro sighs.

“No. In all honesty, now that I missed him, it’ll take a good half a year to find him again. But I know the kid you’re talking about, and from rumours, he’s quiet going in and loud coming out.”

“Looking for explosions?”

“Ha! Yes, just about.”

There’s a companionable silence, broken only be the occasional seethe and the unstable trembling of Mukuro’s illusion.

“…First time having a mind-control kickback?”

“ _Yes.”_

“Tough shit, I’m not the only one who can do that.”

Mukuro tries and fails to hide his tortured expression.

“What was it like?”

“What was _what_ like,” Mukuro snaps, now in a foul mood.

“Killing your family.”

The memories still twist in a swarm of horror inside Kunihiro’s skull.

_Blood splattered the walls. He couldn’t get more than a single rat in that room, but it was a servicable first distraction. He had nicked one of them with a needle, the biggest one, and that one had done most of the violence during the morning firing. They had put the tools for the gun and the reincarnation development in the same room, and he took full advantage of that. While the gore was happening, he crawled under one of the cabinets and watched with a mix of awe and hysterical pleasure as another half of him beat his father’s face in with a hammer. He died a thousand times in this room, and now everyone else gets to try it on for a change._

Mukuro smirks and tilts his head back. _“Wonderful.”_

Kunihiro sits back down inside the boat and looks at the horizon.

“Can’t relate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Culture notes:**  
>  _Kotatsu_ \- A short table surrounded by a blanket with a heater built in the center to keep your feet warm.
> 
>  _Kata_ \- combat forms.
> 
>  _Hair genes_ \- Hair colour is created with two chemicals that control black/brown colour and red hair colour. Both black and brown exist as something like meters with different levels, and the child inherits a parent's hair colour levels. Both Nana and Iemitsu have a low black level, making it a practical genetic impossibility for Tsuna to have pure blue-black hair. Hence the assumption (and Tsuna's later hair dye habits).
> 
>  _Ringokyoukai_ \- Apple Association. An association composed by a man with apple hair.
> 
>  
> 
> You may notice the divergence around Tsuna's black hair drama as the reason for Kunihiro losing contact with Nana. I assure you, Kunihiro would try to kill Iemitsu for entirely different reasons given enough time to stew.
> 
> Junko would still know Nana in canon, but she'd be damned if she exposed her kid to someone with any sort of link to the mafia. It's trading one evil in for another. A canon Tsuna would only recognize the surname, at best. DET!Tsuna is too spacey to even manage that.
> 
> Anyway, shout-out to Naruto SI!OCs & core canon divergence fics for being such an immense inspiration for unnecessarily elaborate and well-developed family/clan settings, and depth of background characters. Couldn't have done it without y'all and your weird obsession with inter-community politics, kekkai genkai drama, and most inexplicably, economics.
> 
> By the way, this operates under the understanding that Sun flames activate the existing healing factors in the body, which replicates cells. Cell replication becomes more imprecise the more it happens, which is what causes aging. Hence, if you need to replicate a massive pool of cells extensively, it's going to speed up the aging process significantly. I'm assuming a Sky's healing process works differently, because the human body can't naturally heal things like spinal damage, but Byakuran did it just fine. I'm also assuming none of that is relevant to Sun Flame users, who are just built differently by default (see: jesus CHRIST ryouhei).
> 
> I also made some playlists! I don't do them often, because I'd always have the same handful of tracks and I don't like using Japanese songs so my pickings are slim, but I actually love making them. There's something strangely pleasing about meticulously picking songs with as accurate lyrics as possible, organizing them by tone, and then by instrumentals to keep the sound consistent so each song seems to move on naturally to the next. It's really fun! Maybe next time I'll make one for Tsuna.
> 
> Yamazaki Kunihiro tracklist (timeline-corrolating — the this chapter ends at track 6):
> 
> 1\. Babel - Mumford and Sons
> 
> 2\. Winter - Daughter
> 
> 3\. Technicolor Beat - Oh Wonder
> 
> 4\. Closer - The Tiny
> 
> 5\. We Are Gods! We Are Wolves! - Le Loup
> 
> 6\. Down - Brandyn Burnette
> 
> 7\. Colors - Halsey
> 
> 8\. Exile Vilify - The National
> 
> 9\. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead - Stars
> 
> 10\. What's Up - 4 Non Blondes
> 
> 11\. Heretic Pride - The Mountain Goats
> 
> Bonus Naoki set (all from roughly post-chapter):
> 
> Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons (a Classic(tm))
> 
> This Too Shall Pass - Danny Schmidt
> 
> The Golden Age - Woodkid


	23. The Recovery Of Peace

“Liar, liar, liar,” a child’s whisper ghosts through the forest. “Liar, liar, liar…”

Gi U’s form has stabilized, but he’s still shedding; countless bumps have unfolded into flowers, and huge chunks of his face are flaking off. He has a terrible stomach ache where his guts had almost peeled open. The closeness of his own death haunts him.

It’s his fault for not putting two and two together; he can’t maintain his form in such lopsided atmosphere. Without an even spectrum, his entire body comes apart at the seams. Because he’s a failure. Because he’s not good enough. Because he wasn’t made right.

“Liar, liar, liar…”

He can taste the heavy green of electricity in the air, as vivid as sight itself. Vines drag heavily across the forest mulch.

“Liar, liar, liar…”

 

* * *

 

Iemitsu’s stress levels escalate when a bloody teen carrying around an even bloodier teen comes rushing out of the forest, babbling in broken, panicked, and heavily accented Italian. His glasses are falling off his face, but his arms are too occupied with holding his injured friend up to adjust them.

“Relax, we all speak Japanese,” he soothes.

“Is it over?” He wails.

“As it’ll ever be. Look right over there.” He points to where the rest of the class are filing out of the butcher’s down the street. Some of them are crying. The pack is obviously being led by a woman, a teenage girl with a face mask and three hair colours, and more perplexingly, a man who looks like he’s aligned with the people who were raiding the town. “Everyone’s safe.”

“W-What about the ones still in the forest?”

“They’re all safe too.”

“Is the blond man dead?”

“The what?”

“The blond man with the staff. He went after Gokudera. What happened to him? Is he dead too? Did Gokudera kill him? Are you guys the CEDEF? What’s the CEDEF? Does it have anything to do with why Sawada is the way he is? No one’s _telling_ me anything! _”_

Iemitsu has never had someone strike horror into his heart within the span of one breath before. It’s an immensely sobering learning experience.

“Everyone is fine,” he says mechanically. “Why don’t you go into the hotel. I have it on good authority a middle-school girl is having soothing therapy taste-test in the restaurant.”

“I like therapy,” the boy mumbles. Iemitsu watches as he wanders over to the hotel, and someone plucks the unconscious boy in his arms off his shoulders. Normally he’d be wary of letting valuable assets around someone with the surname ‘Miura’, but it seems she doesn’t have her sister’s suicidal curiosity, and she’s a middle school girl working happily as a controllable asset, so having her interview everyone seems like the safest thing to do with her.

He turns back to the forest and radios in the recovery team. “Who do you have with you?”

“ _Three adolescent Japanese males, one adolescent Japanese female, two adult Italian males,”_ comes the answer. _“We’ve confirmed that one of them is Smokin’ Bomb Hayato.”_

Iemitsu’s stomach churns. “What about the other Japanese males?”

“ _Identities unconfirmed. One seems to be the boy Squalo called in as dead. He’s fine. The other…the kids won’t let us near him. He looks…”_ There’s audible discomfort in the recovery member’s voice.

“What? Injured? Traumatized?”

“ _It’s better if you see for yourself,”_ she says, at the same time Hayato’s distant, tinny voice can be heard exclaiming _“did you get_ _ **stabbed?”**_

Iemitsu feels dizzy. He can feel a tension headache coming on.

It’s another ten minutes before they actually show up. The students are assigned hotel rooms, circumventing Miura’s little sit-in (as they spent most of the event in a meat locker, and it would benefit them more if CEDEF feeds them information first). Oregano hasn’t slept a wink all week and replaced most of her blood with coffee at this point, so she’s a little more acidic with her words as she tries to coax Squalo’s location out of him. Mammon is standing next to her, wholly disinterested ever since they offered to give Oregano information on Squalo for a price, and Oregano told Mammon to shove their every dollar directly up their tiny toddler ass. She’s not in good shape, but it’s technically proof that Iemitsu was right to assign her to the Varia instead of the Tenth. Everyone else is usually reduced to tears at this point.

Finally, the recovery team appears in an arrowhead formation, mostly blocking Iemitsu’s view. He takes a few steps forward, hoping for at least a glimpse of the people they’re escorting.

It isn’t until they’re directly parallel with him, just about to enter the hotel, that he sees them.

It’s unquestionably his son, black-haired and covered head to toe in blood.

He’s choked up and at a loss for what feels like an eternity after they enter the building. He hasn’t felt like this since he almost killed a yakuza family’s most treasured son. Dread. Apprehension. An incredibly noxious cloud of self-doubt. Terror of the future.

He runs a hand down his face and ties to blink away the stress misting his eyes. He’ll figure it out.

As the lead adviser to the Vongola, it’s his _job_ to figure it out.

 

* * *

 

The hotel is bustling with small groups of people all the way up. Tsuna barely catches glimpses of Irie Shouichi in the restaurant, the man without a shirt and a man with blond hair being guided into a hallway on the first floor, a few people in what looks like medic’s gear headed up the stairs…

Tsuna tries to keep his head down.

The worst part of all, he thinks, is the staring. The way everyone recoils from their group, and the way their eyes linger over the blood he’s covered with, broken only by the small circle where they put the bandage over the stab wound. He feels like a monster in a horror movie. He doesn’t feel human.

There are four rooms on the top floor, and the men split the group between two of them; Hayato and Tsuna in one room, and Takeshi and Hana in the other. Tsuna doesn’t feel it’s strictly decent to room a boy with a girl, but he also doesn’t think Takeshi would grope someone without their permission if you paid him in small countries, so he doesn’t bring it up.

The door closes and locks behind them. Tsuna gets the impression it’s guarded.

“Alright, take off the bandage,” Hayato tells him, “a bit of cotton isn’t going to keep out an infection.”

Tsuna strips down to his underwear and is shoved in the shower, where the water comes off scarlet for a second, then several different shades of pink. Hayato rolls up his sleeves and scrubs Tsuna’s fingernails, and the skin around his eyes, and then he has Tsuna sit down and goes to town on his feet, which come off blackish-brown. All areas Tsuna wouldn’t have thought to clean. He wonders if Hayato has personal experience.

Then the hair; they had apparently only just washed it, but Hayato makes sure to bring another round of dish soap into breaking up the tack of blood. Tsuna is surprised the hair dye survived Hayato’s handiwork. Then he gets a regular wash, with shampoo and conditioner, and Hayato mumbles something about getting the proper medical shampoo some other day.

When he’s done, he sort of shuts down, staring at the stab wound, the scattered cuts all over Tsuna’s stomach from the shattered picture frame. Tsuna touches the wound, wondering maybe if the frame wasn’t there, he would have died from that.

“Come on,” Hayato mutters. “Let’s get that treated.”

Hayato has a lot of salves and antibiotics on him. _For the burns_ , he explains; he’s midrange, and when the fights get into close-combat, he sometimes has to sacrifice his skin to get a good hit in. Tsuna recalls the fight in Koyama, where the room was cramped and tightly-packed, and feels very bad about himself. Hayato’s hands are rough but gentle and methodical, and he seems a lot more used to applying bandages than the frazzled group picking them up from the ruins.

Back in the hotel room, Hayato finds clean clothes; spare T-shirts with the hotel’s logo on it, and swimming trunks from a stash of swimming gear. There’s even diving equipment in there. Hayato wears a red pair, and Tsuna takes a child’s pair in black with floral patterns, on account of his freakishly small hips.

Hayato had rubbed his feet raw, so the carpet feels weird against his sensitive skin. Tsuna sits himself down on the couch and pulls his feet up while Hayato makes them lunch.

 _It’s only one in the afternoon,_ Tsuna wonders, staring at the ceiling. _All of that and it’s one in the afternoon_.

It’s another half-hour before Hayato sets the finished meal — grilled cheese, which is the thing Tsuna least expected a destitute Italian to serve a Japanese person in Japan — down on the table. Hayato immediately begins tucking it in, trying very hard not to make eye contact as he does so.

He hasn’t made eye contact at all since they found each other.

Tsuna eats in idle nibbles. He’s not really all that hungry.

Hayato waits patiently for him to finish, then takes both their dishes to the little dishwasher. Tsuna waits for him to come back, but he doesn’t. He sits up to see Hayato leaning on it, head down.

Tsuna’s gaze slides to the outdoors, the shining sun, where nothing is dark and everything is fine. He can see little dark specs sprinting across the street and meeting with one-another.

There’s been a sensation of intense discomfort buzzing in his head ever since Superbi Squalo, assassin extraordinaire, climbed out of that hole. He looks at his hands; there’s no blood, but they still feel damp. Maybe they’re just clammy.

Tsuna eases off the couch — wincing at the sting of the cuts — and suffers through the carpet against his feet to get to the kitchen.

He pauses, not sure what to say, and then, “Hayato.”

Hayato sucks in a wet, shaking breath. Tsuna feels pushed into silence at the horrifying reality of having to soothe another human being’s emotional distress. Usually he’s just the cause of it.

He’s probably the cause of this too.

“Are you…” He holds his hand up, and then drops it, not sure what he was going to do with it to begin with.

After a long stretch of eternity, Hayato finally breaks the silence with a small, broken “you could have died.”

Tsuna’s not sure how to respond to that.

Hayato finally looks up. His face is still dirty — he hadn’t had a shower of his own yet — and most of his hair has fallen out of the gel, so it hangs over his face. It doesn’t do much to hide the way his eyes are brimming with tears, some of which spill down his face in fat drops, leaving streaks in the dirt.

“You could have died,” Hayato repeats, his voice grating on the words, “you could have died and it’s all my fault.”

“No it isn’t,” Tsuna starts, but Hayato shakes his head.

“Yes it is, I should have gone after you. I should have never wasted time with petty fights. I should have…”

“There’s a lot of should-haves, but no one knew about a mafia raid. There wasn’t any reasoning to it. You’d be _there_ if those things happened, I guess, but there was no reason for you to make those choices anyway. You didn’t know what happened to me.” Tsuna pauses. “…I made the choice to go out and attack that guy. It would have been smarter to hide in the closet — if I did, Squalo would have gone over there and killed him, and nothing would have happened to me. But I didn’t _know_ Squalo was there.”

“I _knew_ you were in danger.”

“Afterwards. And I was with a crowd of friends anyway. So…being slow, sorta, is the only thing that you could even remotely use against yourself.” Tsuna hesitates. “It’s okay if you messed up.”

Hayato’s eyes drift down to Tsuna’s chest. “You’re supposed to be my responsibility. I’m supposed to protect you. It’s the only reason I’m here.”

“But you _are_ here.” Tsuna scratches his collarbone to obstruct Hayato’s view of the bandage. “So you’re doing a hell of a lot better than most people I know.”

They wouldn’t even have gone on that hell vacation if his dad was around — they’d probably just park him at home and force him to go fishing or whatever pointless activity his dad had planned. He can’t blame anyone for what a profound fuck-up this trip turned out to be, but he likes to think he can blame his dad anyway, since he’s the one who thought sending Hayato was a better idea than instructing Tsuna on the pros and cons of gang activity.

“I had one job and I messed it up,” Hayato continues, almost as if he hadn’t heard. “I let this happen. I was given one chance and I blew it, I fucked it up, I _always fuck it up—_ ”

Tsuna grips his wrists, not entirely sure why, and shakes them gently while they’re still in his hands. “You’ve done a better job than every single person in my life so far. And that doesn’t say anything about them. It just says a lot of great things about you.”

Hayato’s eyes flow over, and he makes a small keening sound like he wants to say something, but instead he just twists it into an ugly, tortured noise of distress and collapses onto the dishwasher. Tsuna slides all the way down to the floor with him, still holding tight.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to do.

Tsuna decides to start by giving Hayato a hug.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Miki is allowed to stay in a hotel room, on the first floor along with the rest of the group. The Koyama students are free to wander from room to room, but based on the guards stationed at his door, the privilege doesn’t extend to him. He folds his arms and buries his face in them. The bed is fine. The room is fine. He’s fine.

After attempting to twitch away the crusty feeling from his face a few times too many, he decides to clean himself in the tiny shower. He rubs his skin raw with the body scrubby, and winces at the colour that comes out in the water. When he looks in the mirror, his eyes are glowing orange. He tries covering them with his fingers. The glow isn’t enough to reach through his skin, at least in this lighting. When he turns the bathroom light off, they shine like fairy lights, and distort at the fresh wave of tears threatening to spill over.

Miki gets dressed in the complimentary hotel souvenir clothes he hopes he won’t have to pay for. It would have been nice to stay at that ryokan, but the mafia clearly want them all in one place.

He crawls back into bed and goes back to sitting with his face buried in his arms.

He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, head empty and skin burning, but eventually there’s a knock at the door. Miki buries his face deeper.

“Go away.”

A person comes in anyway.

“There’s a few people who want to speak to you.”

“I don’t care. Go away!”

They approach. Miki looks up with a snarl. “I said _**go away**_!”

Purple flame licks up the body of the mafia man, and with a jerk, he walks straight past Miki and leaps out the window. It’s only the first floor, but Miki gasps and slaps his hands over his eyes, because he _hadn’t meant to do that._

“What’s going on in there?” Someone else demands.

“Nothing! _Nothing!_ Leave me alone!” Miki screams back.

“Oogawa—”

“Leave me alone!”

It’s not going away. This is what Miki was worried would happen, and now it won’t stop. He has to…to go home or…

He sniffles away the snot threatening to leak from his nose. He doesn’t know _what_ he has to do. He doesn’t know where his uncle is, he doesn’t want to talk to his family, he doesn’t want to go and comfort people who had it worse than him, and the only person he could consider an ally here he _mind-controlled._

The anger in him feels weak and unjustified, but he still clings to it.

What is he supposed to _do_ now?

 

* * *

 

The room Hana and Takeshi are left in is oddly quiet. Takeshi sits and observes the uncomfortable peace it provides, strangely ill at ease without the added thread of tension a homicidal ten-year-old gives to silences like these. Instead, all he gets is the sound of Hana using up all the hot water in the shower.

She’s found a T-shirt somewhere, and put her pants back on — she had recovered her clothes when they were being escorted out.

Hana doesn’t seem to notice Takeshi’s thousand-yard stare, more interested in flopping onto the bed and groaning like the death shakes of an elementary-schooler’s stage character. “UUUUGGGHHHH. I finally get to spend time alone with a cute boy and he’s a goofy loser with no sense for girls. This is the _worst_.”

Takeshi knows it’s a joke, but sitting in a peaceful hotel room away from most of his friends is probably actually, genuinely worse for him than getting thrown through a floor.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” he says rigidly.

When he’s finished, Hana has made herself a sandwich that seems to contain an entire garden between two slices of bread. Takeshi just gets himself an apple. She’s occupying herself with a travel magazine on the couch, and he gingerly sits on a chair, careful to do it slowly — he’s mostly shaken off the fatigue and dizziness coming out of that weird blue fire state had given him, but he’s still weak, kind of dizzy, and battling a very mild headache. He’s vaguely aware of the intermittent tremor in…all of him. Mostly his hands. He sits his elbow on the chair to hide it.

“It’s weird to see people react to Tsuna around here,” Takeshi says, half to fill the silence and half to extract Hana’s diabolical secrets, of which, as he’s slowly come to realize, she has many. “Everyone seems so _afraid_ of him. No one acts like this back at home.”

“Well, yeah,” Hana says through a mouthful of sandwich, “that’s because we all know Tsuna’s a huge loser. It’s not like he was always like this.”

Takeshi raises his eyebrows. “He wasn’t?”

“God, no, he’d be the one called ‘Demon of Namimiddle’ instead of Hibari if he was.” She flips over to look at him, perched on her elbows. “There’s only first-year students with us on this trip, so at least some of them have spent all of elementary school getting used to his specific brand of sloth creep, and once you spend time around people who don’t care, you don’t care either.”

“What was it like? When he was in elementary school?”

“Uh…A little before he met Kyouko, he was pretty forgettable. Really high-strung, squeaky, annoying, suuuuuper clumsy. Then a while after he met her, before I was friends with her, he was more like…quiet, spacey, low self-esteem. Around this point the ‘Dame-Tsuna’ stuff stuck. I don’t think he was a huge fan of that, but he was pretty meek from the beginning, so he never said anything about it.” She either ignores or doesn’t notice Takeshi’s bewildered look at the idea of _Tsuna_ being _meek_. “Then he shut down over Golden Week and was out of it _constantly_. It was pretty bad during sports stuff, and you couldn’t trust him to clean the classroom. He’d just clock out. You’d come back two hours later and he’s staring at the ceiling.”

“Did something happen to him?”

“I don’t know! Kyouko says that his mom says that he did that a lot at home even before that, but that might just be because he’s lazy or a bonafide spacecase.” She waves her sandwich idly. “Anyway, it didn’t feel like anything _changed_ , per se, just that he was kinda tired and a total drag to be around. And then he got worse over the years, but in these little stages, and he never acted any differently, beyond all the spaciness, and that went away eventually.”

Takeshi hums and runs his hand through his hair. “…That doesn’t explain the difference.”

“Okay, so, we can’t tell the difference between normal loser Tsuna and whatever the heck you guys see. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t come up. Sometimes he goes _dark_ , yeah? Freaks me out. I can’t trust him to be alone with Kyouko — she lets him get away with waaaay too much, he could have a meltdown and she’d be like, ‘wow, Tsuna, you’re so proactive, murdering that bad man’. Like Gokudera but Tsuna actually listens to her. _Catastrophic_. Usually, though, we all know what Tsuna’s like. He’s a useless dingus. Super lazy, sucks at school, I think he’s scared of dogs? Aaaand I think he’s afraid Onii-san doesn’t like him, or he doesn’t like Onii-san, or something. The point is, Sasagawa Ryouhei accidentally punched him in the face once and now they never talk. So, I mean, if Tsuna can sum up the effort to, he almost has a personality. Not that he ever does that. Sometimes I think he’s going to become a serial killer because he’s too lazy to emote.”

It’s starting to come together, now. “But at face value…”

“Yeah, at face value, just trying to read his expressions or something…nothing there. Just. _Absent._ I think a friend of mine who went to your elementary school said he didn’t have body language, once? The only way a perfect stranger would know he isn’t actually compressed evil or a secret ghost is if they talk to him, and _no one_ wants to talk to him.” Hana sighs. “Kyouko was sooooo worried about it, it’s why she wanted him around a lot of loud people too arrogant to admit he scares them. Also, I think Hibari just straight-up doesn’t notice.”

“He _doesn’t?”_

“I’ve been watching that guy, on account of him being a super freak,” she says with relish. “Okay, so, you know Kyouko just _does not notice_ Tsuna being a sloth freak at all, right? That makes sense in context! She’s grown up with him, and she always had this weird intuition for people, and I don’t think she notices a lot of weird traits people have in general. But Hibari’s never seen Tsuna before NamiMiddle, and it _doesn’t compute_. I’ve seen it. One time Tsuna went Dark when he almost tripped out a window and he was freaking out the whole class for the entirety of English, and then Hibari comes round on patrol during lunch, and he sees everyone kinda tripping out, and then he localizes Tsuna over there, that everyone’s afraid of him, and you could see it in his eyes. It was a really Kyouko moment. Like, _‘I don’t understand, what has this completely ordinary student done’_. He kinda waited for Tsuna to do something, but Tsuna just stared off into space and looked terrifying for a while, so he just gave up and went off to do something else. I think super freaks just can’t detect one another. It was like watching an animal documentary on TV; _Absurd Weirdos In The Wild_.”

Takeshi remembers that day, mostly because he had felt incredibly queasy having Tsuna’s eyes on the back of his head and fled to the baseball shed so he didn’t have to deal with it. He wasn’t there to see Hibari drop by. “You’re, uh. You’re really observant? I don’t think I would have put _any_ of that together.”

“Yeah. There’s _noooo_ good boys in our school, so I have to spend my people-ogling time doing _something_. I have encyclopedic knowledge of anyone who has the gall to do something weird around me. You have three pages in my notebook.”

Takeshi freezes. “…Do I.”

“Yeah, you’re in the ‘why are you the way you are’ category with Onii-san. Did you know you that you’ll do basically anything if you think people want it from you?” She takes a small bite of her sandwich idly, unaware that she is tearing Takeshi’s carefully-maintained universe apart. “Which isn’t weird. Everybody does that. What’s weird is that you get really into it. Like that time everyone was talking about how much they love cats and you said ‘I love cats’, which was a lie because you’re _clearly_ a dog person, but then from then on you pet every cat you ever saw and made sure everyone saw how much you love cats now. So like. Why.”

“I like cats,” Takeshi says defensively.

“No, you _don’t hate_ cats, there’s a difference.” She hoists herself up. “There’s also that thing you do during baseball games where you are like, homicidally intense, which is awesome, but still, why.”

“It’s normal to be focused during a game.”

“You do it when you throw basically anything. Even chalkboard erasers. Do you have some sort of complex or something?”

 _Yes_. “No.”

Hana narrows her eyes at him.

Time to change the subject! “What do you think Tsuna’s doing?”

“Getting babied by Hayato. What else.” She flops back down again, face-first, so her words come out muffled. “Gokudera’s a super freak, too, so he just thinks Tsuna’s a tiny baby kitten that needs to grow up big and strong or something. They just can’t detect each other.”

“Tsuna _does_ tend to ignore Hayato whenever he does anything,” Takeshi says idly.

“Don’t doubt my craft, Yamamoto Takeshi,” Hana snorts. She pauses, and lifts her head up to look up at the balcony speculatively.

“…What?”

“I don’t trust Gokudera to be alone with Tsuna. Tsuna’s a pushover, he might start listening to him.” She gets up and dances outside. After a few seconds of looking around, she stops and looks above the balcony door. Her brow is furrowed. She shakes the bars around her, and then her face splits into a massive grin. She looks over at Takeshi slyly. “…How good is your balance?”

 

* * *

 

Iemitsu starts with the political asset.

According to the Miura girl’s eager descriptions, he has the least amount of information available, but had the largest influence — they have to wrestle it out of him and some of the students, but it seems that during the attack he escaped, warned everyone, and came back to see if he could use new assets to save the people he left behind.

There are about four members of the main family here, none of them Kouyou, but directly sent, and Iemitsu decides not to ask them how closely related to the Kouyou Oogawa Miki actually is, just in case they want him back.

Probably not especially close, in terms of attachments, if they let him take his father’s name. He doubts he has any relationship to the Akiyama group at all.

When Iemitsu enters the consulting room, Oogawa Miki sits with a learned placidness. His eyes are glued to one spot on the table. They are, alarmingly, still glowing bright orange; not enough to illuminate through an opaque spread, but they’re bright enough that Iemitsu knows that if he turns the lights off, he’d still be able to see them in the dark.

“Oogawa-kun, is it?” He asks conversationally.

Oogawa’s lips thin. He’s clearly afraid, Iemitsu’s intuition can feel it, but the only sign of it is the twisted-up pinch of his face.

“I just want to talk to you. Afterwards, I can deliver you to your family outside—”

“My family,” Oogawa says very carefully, “are Oogawa Junko and Oogawa Ryuuga.” His voice is trembling despite the heat laced in every syllable.

Well, that’s as much confirmation as any. Iemitsu collapses into the couch opposite him and sets his face. It’s an expression that makes people do what he wants, whether that’s quailing in fear or feeling inspired.

“In that case, I’ll have someone drive you home.” Iemitsu notes how Oogawa relaxes minutely. “Can you confirm a few things for me?”

The boy’s eyes finally flick up and Iemitsu braces himself for backlash. If Oogawa has no relationship with the yakuza group, that means he has no relationship with Flame users, so by all means, there should be a conflict between their active Sky aspects; a grating, draining pull of two gravitational forces trying to resonate with one another, between Oogawa’s Guiding Eyes and Iemitsu’s Intuition working overtime. Iemitsu joined the CEDEF after he nearly blacked out trying to shake the Vongola Ninth’s hand. He had apparently been just pumping Flames into all the new recruits to test their Auras, and Iemitsu was the only Sky who didn’t hit the floor.

A similar feeling strikes him now. There’s a sharp pull on Iemitsu’s Aura that makes it temporarily unusable in ways Iemitsu is _extremely_ uncomfortable with, and a sharp, stabbing pain in his head that he very carefully does not react to, and then it just…goes away.

Huh. That’s odd. He was under the impression that the activation properties of a Sun would have made that a hell of a lot worse. He’s felt more awful after taking training pills. Their Sky Flames are working in a fairly even harmony, so there’s no need to correct for that, either. It feels harmless.

Oogawa is eying him speculatively. In comparison to Kouyou Naoki, his eyes are a lot brighter, more marigold, lacking the heir’s dark richness. They aren’t nearly as strong, Iemitsu discerns, but they have twice the activation power. Sun Flames glitter invisibly under his skin, desperate to escape. The sheer pressure accounts for some of his instability.

This boy is, for all intents and purposes, a human dying will bullet.

The thought is disconcerting. Reborn would have a fit.

“Can you tell me about the men that attacked you?” Iemitsu asks, pouring tea out for the two of them.

“Most of them were unremarkable but armed with lethal weapons,” Oogawa says quietly. The boy’s voice is almost inaudible. He still hasn’t broken eye contact. “There were two people with special abilities. One seemed to draw energy from the ruins, the other had red fire.”

Rain and Storm — the Storm is dead, and the Rain is currently being held while they try to figure out what to do with him. He was on the bad end of a shrapnel bomb, and they’re still trying to figure out how to fish out all the pieces. “I’ve heard you had an adverse effect to the activation properties of the ruin.”

“It was…” Oogawa’s eyes don’t leave Iemitsu’s face, but they lose focus, no longer tracking him. “…It was like every part of me was being sucked out. I couldn’t stop it.”

“Two of the same aspect being activated at each other directly tends to increase the potency of both,” Iemitsu explains patiently. “The ruin’s resonating and activation, in this case, came at odds with your pre-existing resonate-activation skill. There was a bit of a feedback loop, and it got so severe that you could feel it on main street. It must have been worse for you especially. Can you tell me when that might have happened?”

Oogawa’s mouth thins. “…Sasagawa-san…I thought…I thought he was dead. I was trying to get him to wake up. I’ve never used my eyes like that…usually it’s only commands. Like how the main family does it.”

He looks uncomfortable, so Iemitsu decides to change the subject to give him some respite. “What’s your relationship with your family?”

“Not good. How much sugar are you going to put in your tea? **T** wenty scoops?”

Iemitsu pauses in the middle of his fourth scoop into his tea and lets the spoon drop. “Not a fan of sweet-tooths?”

Oogawa is silent.

“So, your family…”

“My mom disowned them. The only person from Hakuyou we interact with is my Uncle Kunihiro.” Iemitsu flinches at the name, despite himself. “ **D** o you have family you haven’t seen in a while?”

“My beautiful wife and son,” Iemitsu answers idly, putting the scoops of sugar in his tea with a rhythmic motion. Oogawa pours a little packet of cream into his tea without breaking eye contact, still. Iemitsu forgot how much he hates having interviews with the Kouyou heirs. The staring would be decidedly antagonistic on anyone else, but for those with those Guiding Eyes, it’s the equivalent of a mafia man watching the opposition’s ring hand; nothing more than careful wariness. The juxtaposition feels like culture shock. “I haven’t been able to visit regularly ever since my promotion.”

“Everyone in that family is busy with their jobs too. Mom hates them for it. Uncle Kunihiro’s always come out of love, so she tolerated him.” Oogawa’s fingers pick at the hem of his bloodstained shirt. Each blink is a twitchy little flutter. “…The family disowned him.”

Iemitsu’s brows furrow. Last time he interacted with Kouyou Kunihiro, four separate people made the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture and Kunihiro himself fake-coughed outside the board room for the entire meeting and gave him an obnoxiously tortured look when he left, just to fuck with him. They all seemed of the same mind, at the time. _“Why?”_

“I don’t know. He acted horribly afterwards. **W** hen was the first time you drank?”

“Uh— twelve, maybe?”

“I was about seven or eight when he started bringing me to parties. Everything they gave me tasted so awful, but he couldn’t stop it. I think he was burdened with something he couldn’t handle, and he wanted me to carry all of it, no matter what.” Oogawa’s eyes brim with tears. “That isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to be his therapist. I shouldn’t have to fight a bunch of armed criminals. It isn’t fair that everyone uses me like this. **I** want this to stop.”

“No one’s going to use you.” Iemitsu reaches over and clasps the poor boy’s shoulder. “Go. Tell them you’ll be headed home.”

Oogawa quietly slides out of his seat and shuffles to the door.

Damn Japanese politics. Half as bloody and twice as dramatic. Iemitsu’s glad he doesn’t have to suffer it, no matter how strong his intuition is. With a sigh, he takes a sip of his tea.

And promptly spits it out as the taste of twenty scoops of sugar hit his tongue.

Fucking _Kouyous_.

 

* * *

 

Hana’s great plan is to climb over the roof.

Technically a better plan than balancing all the way around the building; Takeshi’s arm is still super broken, and he would have definitely fallen. There’s a thick, wide ledge just above the screen door, and by hopping from the railing, Hana easily clambers right on. She gives Takeshi a hand to pull him up, since he can’t hoist himself.

Then there’s a second and way larger ledge above, part of the slanted decorative-looking rooftop, and very, very hot. They need to wear the slippers from the linen closet to survive it. After that is the gradual upward slant, and then it’s just flat land all the way to the other side.

“I’m a genius,” Hana declares.

They both stroll over it, slide down on their bums, and hop down to the balcony in perfect unison. Takeshi is having fun; he’s never sneaked across the roof of a hotel to avoid the attention of the criminal underworld with a friend before.

The sliding door is locked, so Hana raps on the glass impatiently until a wary-looking Tsuna emerges from the kitchen. He takes one look at the both of them and the tension abruptly seeps out of his form, in favour of looking really tired and irritated.

He unlocks the door, and Hana flings it open before he can react. “Good, you took a shower. I felt I was getting dirtier just looking at you.”

“Hayato cleaned me,” Tsuna says simply. Which is good. Tsuna always looks vaguely dirty and unkempt, and Hayato seems to take pride in being absolutely impeccable at all times. Tsuna’s cheeks look scrubbed, which is the only possible reason colour would ever grace his pallid face. Even his lips tend to be on the ‘sun-stained for the past fifteen years’ side of washed-out pink, when they’re not completely chalk white.

Takeshi isn’t sure why he noticed that. He’s only been around Tsuna for a few days.

“Where is he, anyway?” Takeshi asks, looking around.

“He’s having a crisis of self-worth,” Tsuna says plainly. “I used to have them all the time. It could be a while.”

“Good, he was infallibly perfect for too long, it was starting to bug me,” Hana says.

Tsuna stands there, unblinking. Takeshi thinks it’s awkwardness, at first, a lack of things to say while one of them is having the breakdown that all of them should be experiencing, but then he picks up Tsuna’s position, perfectly set right in their path, and how his spine is ramrod straight.

_Hmmmmmmmm._

Takeshi moves to step around him. Tsuna immediately intercepts him.

Theoretically, he could just pick Tsuna up and toss him aside, or even just jump the couch; Tsuna is neither strong enough nor fast enough to stop him. But the effort to stop him was still made, and if there’s one thing Tsuna isn’t known for, it’s effort. Also, Takeshi doesn’t know Hayato that well and Hayato probably only knows him as ‘the guy who smelled him’, so any attempt at comfort would invariably fail.

Thankfully, Hana is kind of a jerk. “Hey! Gokudera! You wanna talk about magic powers? It’s the UMA stuff you’ve always wanted!”

Hayato sniffles deeply, and after a few seconds, comes out from the kitchen. If he’s been crying, it hasn’t been long enough to irritate his skin. But he was totally crying. Tsuna practically stares holes in Hayato’s head. Takeshi imagines that this is just what Tsuna looks like when he’s worried.

“…Yeah. You bring his sword?” Hayato finally manages to growl.

“Right. We couldn’t use it in front of the rescue team,” Takeshi recalls. They had all just assumed that he came in with the sword, and, _well_. He _did_ go in there with a sword. The scabbard is ornate, but not enough that you take one look at it and go _ancient relic_. They’ll probably try and take it from him by tonight.

When they do, he’ll cite the helpful assassin boss. If that doesn’t work, he might try fighting them for the privilege of ownership. Foreign criminals all seem like the type to be into that, if Hayato, Gi U and Squalo are any indication. It’s a really cool sword, and it would suck if he couldn’t have it.

“No, just wanted to check in. Hold on,” Hana says, and she practically bounces like a rubber ball from the balcony to the railing to the roof above. Takeshi listens carefully; he can’t hear footsteps. That’s good.

“You went over the roof?” Tsuna asks, his monotone obscuring the reason for the question. Could be disbelief, could be ‘so that’s where you came from’.

“The roof is built into shelves, and then it’s just flat,” Takeshi explains. “We walked. Hana’s idea.”

“Excellent,” Hayato mutters into his nails, which he’s taken to chewing. Probably a bad habit he picked up now that he’s stopped smoking; the scent of cigarette smoke that used to permeate him is almost entirely absent now. “She has a confirmed continuous track record of decent ideas. We’re recruiting her.”

“She already recruited herself,” Tsuna says with a hint of idle boredom, a tone he tends to take when he’s trying to ignore any sort of shenanigans. He’s been using it a lot for this trip.

“What? No, she’s loyal to the Kyouko girl, isn’t she?”

“She recruited herself,” Tsuna repeats, almost wistful in his disinterest. _And there’s nothing I can do about it_.

Hana comes back way faster than Takeshi expected, his magic sword in one hand and a bundle in the other. She has to hop to re-align a slipper that almost came off when she was trying to jump down, but she manages.

“Hello, boys,” she sings. “I come bearing presents.”

She places the sword and the bundle on the coffee table and undoes the fabric.

There is the old metal plate she had fished out of the ruin, two knuckle blades, a golden knife caked in blood, and her water gun.

“ _Where did you get those?”_ Hayato roars, distress forgotten.

“Remember when you were spitting mad about Tsuna getting stabbed in the chest and everyone was freaking out?” Hana says easily.

“They didn’t catch you sneaking over to the corpse?”

“No one wants to look at corpses. It’s a rule.”

“Where did you get the _knife_?”

“When I said I had to go pee while we were waiting for them I was lying.” She picks it up. “Cause of death; repeated head-stabbing.”

“Man, that’s nasty.”

“It was my first dead body. It was just, the grossest. Staring at it kinda made me feel better though.” She picks it up by the butt of the handle with two fingers, like the whole thing is covered in dog poop. “Who wants to wash it?”

Hayato snatches it out of her hands and marches off to the bathroom. Tsuna watches him as he leaves. His face is carefully blank; almost unidentifiable, if not for the way it’s tense in places it’s usually slack.

Tsuna killed that man.

Takeshi feels…weird, about it, because out of all of them, he seems to be the _only_ one who killed anybody. Even Hayato held back. Sure, Takeshi wanted to kill someone, more than anything, but it fizzled out along with his blue fire state. He wonders if Tsuna had a state of his own, or if Tsuna is just pre-packaged that way, to respond to absolute threats with absolute violence. It feels weird, looking at Tsuna, small and brittle and big-eyed with his hair in a wild black poof, and think ‘ _killer’_. Is it Hibari’s influence? Or has he always been this way?

And that’s right, isn’t it? He’s always been _wrong_. There was always something _wrong_ with him, right from the start. Not the stuff that Takeshi was afraid of, when he used to think Tsuna was some unfathomable danger, but the stuff _Hana_ is afraid of. The fear isn’t that he’s evil, per se, it’s that he just doesn’t have the kind of restraints normal people do. The world seems two steps to the right, and from that distance, ‘stab in the man repeatedly in the head until he’s no longer a threat’ is easily within his grasp.

Something like that is somehow even scarier.

Whatever the case, Tsuna doesn’t seem too happy with himself. He’s been looking a little grey since Hana brought it up.

“TAKE A SHOWER WHILE YOU’RE IN THERE,” Hana shouts after Hayato, “YOU LOOK DISGUSTING.”

“ _FUCK YOU!”_ Hayato shouts back.

“So the gun…” Takeshi leads, shaking off the melancholy.

Hana pops the magazine out and cracks it open. Takeshi’s eyebrows shoot up when he sees four bright red bullets inside.

“ _Oh_.”

“Turns out you can put anything in this thing as long as the bullet’s within ten millimeters,” Hana says, prying one out. “See the grooves? That woman is an insidious pain in the neck. You don’t have to guess what the bullets are, in this case.”

Takeshi’s fingers raise to the mark on his forehead — an impact star where the rotation had tore the flesh, and a teardrop downward, where the material had sunk in before dribbling down his face. He thankfully does not have streaks mimicking the path of blood all the way down to his chin. That would have been horrifying.

“Maybe,” he says carefully, “we don’t use those.”

“Dibs on shooting Hacchan in the head,” Tsuna says almost immediately after.

  
  


* * *

 

“Grape juuuiice!”

“Yes, yes, let me flip these pancakes, though—”

“Grape juice! Grape juice!”

“Come now, you’re not a baby anymore, are you?”

Far, far north, in a cramped house in Tokyo, a man bustles through his apartment. A small child — stunted for a five-year-old — sits on his hip and makes his frilly apron ride up a bit. The child has a tight near-afro, half of it groomed and half of it a frizzy, half-burnt mess, no thanks to his latest escapades. There’s a grenade still sticking out of it. The man gently plucks it from his hair, pauses, and digs his hand in until he pulls out an entire gun.

“No weapons,” he says sternly.

The child sucks his thumb and remains conspicuously silent.

Another child, similarly toddler-sized and wearing a fedora, sits at the table staring into his phone. He looks up to the kitchen, speculation in his eyes.

“Federico.”

“Hm?” Federico responds, distracted with the juice-pouring.

“The second Vongola heir has become active.”

As expected, Federico spins around so hard the top half of the boy in his arm flops backwards. _“There’s another Vongola heir?”_

The toddler drinks in the hope and joy in the man’s eyes and continues with, “yes. He’s fourteen years old.”

That hope and joy dies a horrible, horrible death. Delectable.

Reborn ignores the man’s petulant whining to look back at the phone. As funny as it is to harass Federico like this, the problem still persists…

Who the hell is Iemitsu’s son, and what has he done to get the whole of the CEDEF worried about contingencies?

“That’s wonderful,” Federico’s own son says distantly, playing with the paws of his panda doll. “he’s my age.”

Reborn looks at him and adds his own contingencies, which mostly include shooting out the kneecaps of any and all mafia heirs who would dare so much as breathe in the boy’s direction, Vongola or not. The only official mafia decree Federico would sign off on, to be honest.

“Nothing wonderful about that,” Reborn says. “Eat your eggs.”

Toru blinks slowly, seeming to dissect Reborn with his gaze. Intelligent, but very absent. Then he obediently takes the fork and lets the doll lean forward so he can eat. Reborn goes back to sending out his texts.

The added pressure on Federico’s shoulders to take over the Family is appreciated. The unpredictable factors involved are not.

He’s going to have to call in a few favours.

 


	24. The Recovery Of Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel I should say that while I think Iemitsu is an abusive neglectful garbage man who doesn't deserve to call himself Tsuna's father, I'm not really interested in Iemitsu bashing. Iemitsu has been consistently depicted as ruthlessly competent, and there's always this impression that he considers Tsuna more of a job/Vongola asset than his actual kid, even if he loves him, so I like writing the mentality that puts him in that sort of position, and how it makes sense for him.

In the end, Tsuna doesn’t get to shoot Hana in the head, which is on some level disappointing. No one gets shot in the head, thanks to Takeshi’s redoubled efforts to make sure it doesn’t happen. Tsuna doesn’t think Takeshi appreciates the potential therapy value of shooting your friend in a controlled environment when you know they’ll be safe, and having that knowledge re-affirmed.

Also, Tsuna has found his patience for her exceedingly low ever since she dropped into their hotel room. Something to do with her big mouth, blatant disrespect for Hayato’s emotional boundaries, and making them talk about magical powers when they should be focusing on making a friend feel better.

Granted, Hana is friends with absolutely none of them. She’s just there. Being awful to everyone. Because she can.

Tsuna wishes he could shoot Hana.

“So here is what we know,” Hana says, finishing her diagram. Oh, Tsuna had spaced out for a second, there. On the paper in front of her is a box, labeled ‘Blue’ in the absence of pencil crayons, and the outlines of more potential boxes. “The ruin runs on Blue Power. That’s like…”

“Sage’s Aura,” says Takeshi.

“Right.” She puts the name in the Blue box. “And there’s more than one kind of thing, here.”

“The guy who went after me and gun kid used red fire,” says Hayato.

“Stop calling him ‘gun kid’, I know you know his name,” Hana snaps.

“Shut up. There’s also that glittery shit that was all over Sasagawa.”

“Give it a _colour,_ Gokudera.”

“I don’t know, _bright_.”

Hana labels the box ‘yellow?’ and folds her arms.

“I think they do special stuff too,” Takeshi says. “Like…when I was using it, everything felt very slow. Thick. Heavy.”

“Water-y Aura. Great. We’re learning so much,” Hana mutters, but she still scribbles it down.

“No, he’s right. The red fire doesn’t just burn, it breaks down. And it kind of…I don’t know, itches, when it comes out of you. When that guy hit the tree, it was almost like it was rotting. Everything holding it together just…” Hayato drifts off, and looks stunned at the middle distance. Hana pauses, noticing his drifting attention, and clearly not liking it. After a second, her mistrust is justified when he snatches the pen from her hand and starts scribbling on the paper.

“ _Hey!”_

“Shut up! I remembered something!”

He’s filling in the Red box, _fast_ , and with exceptional detail. His handwriting is neat and tidy even when he’s in a rush, but the longer he’s at it the faster and more unstable he scrawls it out. He’s made another box, labeled ‘purple’, and his pen is practically streaming across the page.

“What the hell, did two thugs give you their life story?”

“No, I know…I _knew_ someone with these powers.” He runs a hand through his hair, freeing even more of it from what little gel remains. He looks… _hurt_. Tsuna looks at Hana and instantly blames her for all of it. “She could…she could _do_ things, and it seemed like magic. The mafia scouted her for it. This is…this has to run deep.”

“Conspiracy theories, your favourite,” Hana sings.

“My favourite is aliens,” Hayato says without a lick of irony. Takeshi looks at him like Hayato often looks at Tsuna, which isn’t a comfortable look to receive from anyone.

“So the mafia is wizards,” Tsuna says.

“ _No,”_ Hayato snaps, before he pauses and makes an _‘eeehh’_ sound.

“Can we just open the door and ask about their magic powers?” Hana asks.

“I don’t want to. It might make them actually look into the stuff we have, and we got a lot of stuff.” Takeshi gestures at Hana’s haul.

Hayato barely acknowledges them, scribbling yet another box, unlabeled, but with the ability of ‘illusions’. Tsuna leans in, frowning at the paper.

“Just how much magic powers did you guys _see_?”

“Did you not see any?” Takeshi asks, as Hayato taps his pen and tentatively writes the name ‘Gi U’ and links it to the Purple box.

“No, I hid in a closet, attacked a man with a centuries-old katana, and got stabbed. Hana just hid in the closet,” Tsuna gripes.

Hana freezes. She sucks in air through her nose, and the only sound for a precarious few seconds is Hayato’s fevered writing. Something in the back of Tsuna’s head does a Weird Thing, where irritation is offset by a permeating wave of uncertainty, followed immediately by irritation again. A few aborted twitches move through her body, before she springs across the table and snatches the paper away from Hayato. “Okay, that’s enough.”

“Hey! I was using that!”

“Uh-huh. Who’s Nazario?”

“Tried to kill me.”

“Everyone was trying to kill us, you have to be more specific.”

“Long hair, tried to kill me. Gimme the paper back!”

“No. I’m putting Onii-san in the glitterbox, though, forgot to do that.”

“Give it to me!”

Hana shoves her foot in his face. “Anyone else with obvious magic powers you can think of?”

“He already put Gi U on there,” Takeshi says.

“Right.” Hana shoves her toes into Hayato’s nose and lifts his chin up with her heel while she reaches over the table to grab a stolen knuckleblade. “Hey Gokudera, use these.”

Gokudera sputters, yanking himself away from her foot, torn between anger and confusion. Hayato seems to struggle with being outraged by more than one thing at any given moment. _“What?”_

“You said ‘when it comes out of you’, which means you’re in the Red Aura camp. Takeshi-kun can do it on command. Right Takeshi-kun?”

“I was shot by a magic bullet. I don’t know if we can really use me as an example.”

“Whatever. Use the blades, Gokudera.”

Gokudera snatches it out of her hand and grimaces at it. He shoots Tsuna a wary look. Tsuna blinks back at him, not sure what Hayato wants from him. After a few seconds, Hayato seems to decide to give his undivided attention to the blade in his hand, running a finger along the serrated edge.

The dark gunmetal grey takes on a warmer hue, and the edges tremble with something unstable and hazy, but nothing else happens.

“Well, it works,” Takeshi says, after a moment.

“I didn’t see anything,” Hana frowns.

“It didn’t really do much,” Tsuna hums. “Just kinda ripple-y.”

“Maybe you should shoot me in the head with your magic bullet. See what that does,” Hayato suggests with forced casualness.

“You should think of something inspiring. Like someone murdering all of your friends.”

Everyone turns to look at Takeshi.

Takeshi awkwardly edges backwards.

Hayato’s grip on the blade tightens, and this time, it glows hot red. He blinks at it, and his face splits into a smile. “…Hey, you’re right! It worked!”

Tsuna is seriously starting to worry if these two actually came out of the assault sound in mind. He knows Hayato feels guilty, but working up the willpower to set a weapon on fire with the power of how afraid you are of losing everyone you love is a little much, even for Tsuna, who has chronic self-destructive habits based around that exact fear. They should maybe talk about it. It went so well, last time.

“I still don’t see anything,” Hana sighs.

Tsuna gingerly picks up the gun. “See, I was right. We should definitely shoot Hacchan in the head.”

 

* * *

 

The next one on Iemitsu’s list is Irie Shouichi.

His story checks out cleanly; Miura Fuyumi is pretty well-known for squirreling away illegally obtained blueprints like some sort of absurd militant weaponry hoarder, but she’s also well-known for hiring people who don’t know much about guns to make guns, for reasons Iemitsu has yet to truly understand. A young blogger with an anxiety disorder and a metalworking hobby easily fits that picture.

“So,” Iemitsu says, tone friendly and face like ice. Not that it works. He expected it from Oogawa, who was terrified but mostly pissed, but the boy doesn’t seem to acknowledge Iemitsu’s face at all. “…What brings you here?”

“Miura-san was developing a gun I designed, and she gave it to her student. I’m supposed to be observing her use it,” Irie says.

Iemitsu’s Hard Look freezes on his face. He tries very hard not to widen his eyes. “Miura-san’s _student_.”

“She’s more normal than I expected. Apparently she just learns how to shoot guns.” Irie tucks his hands into his armpits. “It never really occurred to me, you know. That Miura-san shoots guns. I just thought she made them because she has weird hobbies. She’s got like six animatronics she’s made herself in that apartment. I’m pretty sure she collects scrap metal. She doesn’t use it for anything, she just _likes it._ ”

Iemitsu relaxes slightly. “That woman doesn’t have a lot of fans.”

“I know. But I just feel sort of…” Irie tucks himself inward, looking decidedly miserable and unwilling to make eye contact. “…I feel like I’m doing something when I work with her. Like I’m someone important.”

That speaks to a level of youth indoctrination Iemitsu wasn’t aware Miura was capable of. Most of his accounts of her interacting with children are ‘asking for favours’ and ‘breaking bones’, and it’s only the fact these two never overlap that keeps her reputation afloat. The concept of manipulating people always seemed somehow beyond her.

Iemitsu chalks up the fact Irie finds self-worth in working with Miura as a complete accident of desires aligning rather than any social competence on her part. She’s enough of a headache as it is.

Still, nothing seems amiss here. Miura is housebound in Namimori, not doing anything she’s not supposed to, and that’s good enough for the CEDEF. Iemitsu has more important problems on his mind.

“You mentioned Sawada earlier.”

Trepidation clings to Iemitsu’s stomach as Irie visibly turns the statement around in his mind.

“…He’s…He’s here on vacation,” Irie says slowly. “Because he broke a rib.”

“He—” Iemitsu stops himself when he remembers that Gokudera had actually reported that; an accident during a spirited argument between two people much larger than Tsuna is. It was eventually attributed to the fact Tsuna is _exceptionally_ brittle. He lets out a slow breath to steady himself. “Go on?”

“Everyone around him is…” Irie taps his fingers nervously against his sides and bows tighter, cradling his stomach. “…I don’t know how to put it…Gokudera is the leader, but everyone seems to revolve around Sawada. Like…”

“Like the centre of a solar system,” Iemitsu dryly assists. It’s been obvious from the start that the boy is a Sky.

Irie shakes his head. “No. Like a black hole.”

There’s something dark, hunted and afraid in his expression, something that tells Iemitsu that whatever he means by ‘black hole’, it’s not meant to be a positive. That the connotations of sucking emptiness are 100% intentional.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Irie whispers. “Oogawa-san is like a supernova, but everyone keeps revolving around that… _darkness_.”

The clarification spins a knot of anxiety in Iemitsu’s stomach.

“Thank you. You can go home now, if you want to.”

“If it’s okay, I’ll just wait for Kurokawa-san to be done. I still need to record information on the gun,” Irie mumbles.

“That’s fine. The men outside will show you to your room.”

Irie shuffles away, and Iemitsu clasps his hands and presses them down hard on his forehead, praying for some sort of answer. He wants to go upstairs and demand answers from his son, or the sparse few people that were in that ruin with him, but the fear is something like a physical pain, and there are plenty of reasons not to.

_Black hole._

He’s not talking about personality. He’s talking about Flames.

God’s sakes, that boy only has the thin protection of a man who doesn’t want to lead to protect him from the largest mafia organization in the world. If Frederico dies, what happens to the Vongola? What happens to _Tsuna_?

There aren’t contingencies for this, just fear and prayers and a feeling he wants to do just about anything else right now. There’s something wrong with Tsuna, and there’s nothing Iemitsu wants to do less than figure out _what_.

There’s a small knock at the door.

Iemitsu opens it to Oregano, who has transcended from ‘sleepless and irritable’ to ‘barely tethered to reality’. She seems shellshocked.

“Anything to report?”

“…Squalo, he…he’s not going after the Bambino Beelzebub.”

Iemitsu’s face drops. “That’s _absurd_.”

“I know, but he…” She runs a hand through her hair. She looks miserable. “He says he’s…he’s doing a favour for _the boss_.”

There’s a moment of shared horror where both of them know, with absolute conviction, that Squalo isn’t talking about the Ninth.

Iemitsu marches out of the room and his voice carries like a lion’s roar.

“WHAT THE _HELL_ WAS IN THAT RUIN?”

 

* * *

 

They still don’t get to shoot Hana in the head. This time Tsuna thinks it’s because everyone more or less knows why he wants to.

The mechanics of the sword and the blades seem inherently different; Hana can see the sword glow and give off light, just like she had seen the whole ruin glow blue. Whatever the blade is made of is constructed to actually light up when it’s ignited. The blades, on the other hand, just produce the Aura/Flame, so Hana can’t see it. It all feels weirdly scientific for magic powers.

They all play with all the tools, but the knife and the plate (obviously) don’t respond to anything any of them they do.

Irie Shouichi’s presence helps things along once Hayato throws out that whatever was making the ruins freak out was making his rings glow, which added a ‘orange’ box, giving them six boxes altogether. The ‘illusions’ title is the most pitiful out of all of them, but ‘gun kid said the sky looked weird and Yamazaki told him it was an illusion’ isn’t exactly a detailed description. Gokudera and Hana yell at each other over it.

They finish squabbling around three-thirty, but Tsuna feels ill at ease and doesn’t really want any of them to leave; he just feels better surrounded by people right now. It’s a great distraction to the lingering threat of flashbacks and the sensation of wetness on his hands. He knows the blood isn’t there, and he can’t see any of it, but they just feel _so wet_. When the knife was offered, he only pressed a finger against it, not sure what would happen if he grabbed the handle.

“Let’s see if there’s any movies,” Takeshi suggests, because he’s an angel.

And then there’s squabbling over what movie to watch. Tsuna curls up next to Hayato, who might need just as much comforting as he does. Takeshi seems to replenish his energy the longer he spends in the company of others, and Hana is barely affected at all, so Tsuna finds himself gravitating towards the one who actually cried, who is actually acting like what happened _was_ worth crying about.

Not that Tsuna would cry. He hasn’t cried since the roof, and before that…before that, it’s been _years_.

They put on a mindless action movie. Tsuna leans against Hayato and wraps his fingers around his wrist.

It’s probably a mistake.

His heart feels tight, and the air feels damp, and suddenly everything feels awful, _nothing is okay_ , everything is claustrophobic and pressing up against him, crushing him, _inescapable_ , and there’s only the determination to _not let this happen—_

Tsuna flinches at the wave of emotions hitting him like the acid taste of bile, heaving upwards after he thought he had digested everything that happened to him. No memories, just panicked emotion, not tethered to anything at all. He slips his trembling fingers into Hayato’s hand and grips it tight and tries to keep swallowing it back, like he can treat his trauma like acid reflux.

Something’s wrong with him.

_Something’s wrong._

Hayato squeezes back.

 

* * *

 

 

They keep Nazario in a sweet-smelling room with fluttering curtains. They have people healing him.

He doesn’t know that much about Suns, but he knows they’re the ones who heal. Ivo has that healing power.

He stares at the ceiling as he lets himself understand that Ivo is dead.

Marcello is dead and Ivo is dead and now Nazario is alone.

Not in the room; there are healers in the room, and a few injured men, including the boxer child he and Marcello had tried to dispose of and the traitor crewman, looking confused and hunted and flinching whenever someone uses their Flames. Nazario has no idea what the hell happened to that one.

What now?

They won’t kill him, if they’re bothering to heal his more superficial wounds. The little pieces of stone were painstakingly removed, and each hole was healed over carefully until there was nothing left but dark, sore scabs and vicious bruises. Apparently healing too much is bad for you, or something, and denying him something that’s bad for him is another hint that he’s getting out of this.

But he doesn’t _want_ to.

It was just the three of them since they were kids, and no matter how many years they spent apart, they always swung back together. It was supposed to be the three of them after this job. It was supposed to be the three of them finally joining a Family, gaining some sort of power, insurance that smuggling just couldn’t get them.

A gaggle of middle schoolers later and everything is in fucking pieces.

He doesn’t understand why that boy stopped, because he _knows_ that little shit, he knows he has a death count under his name. It would have been so _easy_. He could have done it, and Nazario wouldn’t be alone anymore. He wouldn’t be… _this_. In pain and lost and out of options, lying on a hotel bed and wishing he had the will to live, but he doesn’t.

He’s alone. He’s always going to be alone, now.

He doesn’t have the energy for resentment, because they all _knew_ , they knew it was life and death, that they were _danger_. The fucking traitor who killed his best friend is right there and all Nazario can think is _okay_ , and _it hurts_.

 _It hurts_ to be alive. It hurts to suck in every breath his friends can’t. He doesn’t know what it means to be angry anymore. It just hurts, and he can’t even strike out, because it won’t bring them back, and it won’t justify a damn thing. Marcello didn’t die for nothing, he died for an already potentially-fatal job, one they agreed on being worth the risk. He signed on knowing someday, someone might shoot his brains out, given the chance. Ivo signed on knowing someday, there’s going to be enemies he won’t be able to handle. Nazario signed on knowing someday, some cocksure hitman might come down on his head.

But god does it ever fucking _hurt_.

The door creaks open. Nazario glances over to see a blond man — some sort of authority figure — standing there, looking about as tired as he feels.

“I’d like to ask you two a few questions,” he says. His voice is hard and glacial.

 _Torture me,_ Nazario thinks. _Do something._

The traitor unfolds his legs and follows the man. He looks over at Nazario with a wild-eyed sort of fear, like maybe he expects Nazario to leap out of bed and tear all his scabs trying to kill him.

Nazario just lays there and feels very, very cold.

They leave.

He closes his eyes so they don’t hurt so much, and his eyelashes feel damp.

_What now?_

 


	25. The Recovery Of Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Slight derealization/depersonalization, detailed vomiting scene, gore, underage drinking, stress-drinking, symptoms of PTSD (emotional/partial flasbacks), implied child abuse

Kyouko wakes up in a cold sweat, jumping up so fast that the large, firm arm trying to hold her back feels like a hammer to her chest.

“Onii-san,” she gasps, then, “oh, he’s fine.”

She straightens and tries to take in her surroundings now that she isn’t completely ruled by worry. She’s in the school infirmary, and the sky is steadily darkening. There’s no one else around, except for sports teams and the steady figure of Kusakabe at her bedside.

“Senpai,” she says distractedly. “Hello.”

“You passed out in class earlier,” Kusakabe says, full of stern concern.

“I’m fine, I just…” She touches the side of her forehead gently. It’s only a little sore. “Someone hurt my brother.”

His brows furrow. “Your brother?”

“He’s on vacation. I was so scared, I could _feel_ it.” She sags slightly. “He’s okay now, but I don’t know what happened. Do you think he was hit by a car?”

“You passed out in class…because…you felt that your brother, who isn’t in school, was injured?”

“I can usually just _tell_. But I never get the reasons right, he’s always doing the weirdest things.” She shakes her head. “Sorry, I must have missed our meeting.”

Kusakabe is looking at her. He’s anticipating something.

“Ah…I shouldn’t be talking about my brother like that,” she realizes. “Oh, I’m sorry, it must be bad enough for you, when Hibari-san is—”

Kusakabe’s reaction is abrupt and visceral. His eyes widen, narrow, and he grabs her wrist and _squeezes_ , so sudden and so tight she cries out and falls back on the bed.

“ _How do you know about that?”_ His voice is hot, furious, and grim in a way Kyouko’s never heard from him, and the stress and fear comes back with a vengeance.

“That’s what…that’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it?” Kyouko whispers.

“ _How do you know?”_

“I-I don’t…” Kyouko tries to backtrack to where she got the information, but she can’t. It just _is_. A fact sitting in her head like it’s always been there. ‘Kusakabe is worried about Hibari’s safety’. The deeper she looks, the more she realizes other things just _are_. Hibari’s anxiety, a horrible aura that’s choking the town, and _fear_. It crawls at the back of her head, an entrenching horror somewhere where neither of them are. The deeper she plunges into Namimori, the more she comes out feeling, as if it’s oozing secrets. “I just _do_.”

Kusakabe stares at her. Slowly, he releases her hand, and he sags too, looking _awful_. He wipes his hands over his face and lets out a long, slow breath. Finally, he looks up at her with strained eyes.

“…Sasagawa, I’m going ask you a question, and I want you to answer honestly.”

She curls up a little. “…O…Okay?”

“ _Are you psychic?”_

Suddenly, everything makes quite a bit more sense.

 

* * *

 

“Here we go,” Hana declares, stuffing their weapons into a little crook on the roof.

“You sure they won’t find it there?”

“Well they’ll definitely find it in our rooms, soooo,” Hana says leadingly. Takeshi just shrugs.

After their impromptu movie night, Takeshi was losing saliency and Tsuna was clocking out at a steadily increasing rate, so Hana and Gokudera decided to collect their own, Gokudera leading Tsuna by the hand to their bedroom and Hana throwing a cup of water over Takeshi’s head so he wouldn’t pass out on her. She can’t carry a 180-centimetre teenage boy with a broken arm onto and over a hotel roof.

She took the package, but Takeshi had brought up an important issue earlier with the concern of having their prizes found.

So, hidey-holes.

Takeshi isn’t really paying attention, though. He’s staring off into space in the direction they came from, with a frown fixed on his face. “…You think Tsuna’s okay?”

“He’s fine. He’s always fine.”

“I know, but I mean…he seemed kinda…” Takeshi scratches his head. “Worried.”

“He’s _fine_ ,” Hana says, if only so she doesn’t have to hear it. She doesn’t have the energy to pick apart either Tsuna or Takeshi’s psyche right now, and there’s a whole lot to pick apart, even in regards to something as simple as Takeshi’s concern for the little sloth creep.

If Hana had to describe how Takeshi feels about Tsuna, it would be an endless _thirst_.

Hunger, _hunger_ is usual Takeshi’s game. He’s hungry for a lot. For information, tangible relationships, and always for approval. He craves it, seeks it out in every situation, and feels happy and full on it when he gets his way. Takeshi’s hunger is really uncomfortably familiar to Hana. They don’t have the same overall tastes, really; Hana doesn’t bother with validation, beyond that of her friends, for one. But in little ways, the two of them pretty similar. Canny little information sponges who want someone to be tangled up in.

It’s the thirst that’s different.

Yamamoto Takeshi spent the entire first few months of knowing Tsuna being pants-shittingly terrified of him, maybe even more than his peers, because he spent most of his time in class with Tsuna staring at the back of his head and he couldn’t quite wrestle himself into a position where he could absorb the opinion ‘Tsuna is a huge loser baby’. It was almost funny.

But now Tsuna has _given_ him something, _fed_ him, at some point Hana can’t quite place, and now there’s this thirst. A dependency. This weird…half-desperation, all-consuming _need_ , the kind of shit Hana reads in sappy romance novels where it’s heart-throbbing in the confines of the pages, but kind of weird and unhealthy in real life.

He’s in _loooooooooove_.

But in a really, _really_ weird way. There’s no way Tsuna would understand — on account of him being a huge weenie and a perpetrator of this creepy behaviour himself — how unsettling Takeshi is being. Like someone who found an oasis and decided to set up camp forever, to hell with the world outside that one glimpse of water. It’s not the kind of feeling dictated by actual logic.

Hana doesn’t want to tease him, because it makes her skin crawl, the deliberateness and patience in how he regards Tsuna. It makes her skin crawl in ways Gokudera’s absurd screaming obsession with Tsuna doesn’t, because that’s all 100% one-sided responsibility.

It makes her skin crawl in the same way seeing Takeshi get up in that ruin did, his eyes clear and cold under the languid stream of the blue flame on his forehead, taking in everything he needed to and then going right on with the most important task that struck him in that moment, no interest in the details.

It makes her skin crawl in the same way Tsuna going Dark does.

It’s like when she was seeing Tsuna, Dark as Hana has ever seen him, silhouetted in the doorway of the closet, covered in visible blood splatters on what few edges the glowstick could illuminate. Smudges along his arms, looking like _true_ black, something that _sucks up_ light, trailing down his arms from a cut on his arm that didn’t exist.

It’s the kind of immediate, laser-like focus you get when a pulse of adrenalin eats up your fear.

_Do I have to kill you?_

And then, for others,

_Do I have to kill for you?_

It’s not something Hana really noticed in Takeshi at all beforehand, but the entire time they were in that suite, his eyes tracked Tsuna and repeated that question endlessly.

_Do I have to kill for you?_

Intellectually, Hana knows it’s because earlier this morning someone nearly killed half his friends and Takeshi is just the type of guy to pick out his favourite person and go _alright, how do I stop that from happening to you in particular._ It’s not like Takeshi _means_ to be weird about it. It’s perfectly sensible. The intensity is chalked up to his huge, embarrassing crush.

It’s just that Hana has spent so, _so_ long seeing Tsuna give that look to Kyouko, and god does it ever make her shiver.

Not that she’s worried about Kyouko. She’s just worried about what would make Tsuna think that sort of obsessive focus is appropriate. All of Takeshi’s friends nearly _died_. He got _chucked through a floor_. Tsuna showed up _soaked in blood with a stab wound_. What the hell is Tsuna’s damage, where he automatically defaults to a look like that?

Well, besides the fact Tsuna is in _looooooooove_.

Which is another thing Hana isn’t comfortable teasing him about. Everyone around her is incapable of having crushes like normal people, Tsuna especially. He has a specific Weird Skin-Crawly look for Hibari too, which reads less like _I’ll kill for you_ and more like _kill me god please destroy me_. Tsuna is horrific to keep track of. Hana has four journals on him. Not pages. _Journals_. Every facet of him is a new level of unsettling and/or embarrassing, and she feels a terrible urge to always learn more, regardless of relevancy, like watching a trainwreck.

Hana needs better friends.

When they get to their suite, Takeshi passes out the moment he hits the bed. He’s still exhausted from his fight or whatever, and wasn’t running on all cylinders the whole time anyway. Hana feels restless, and doesn’t go to sleep herself. There’s something weighing down her shoulders, crawling along the back of her mind.

Instead, she heads back out the balcony, and starts dropping floors.

Each floor has an expanse of open air before the next, a constant barrage of heart-stopping moments. She makes it to the fifth floor, where the building abruptly stops having balconies. The sliding door is open, and she doesn’t bother checking for tenants, just dives across the room and barges out the door.

No one stops her on her way to the elevator. She hops on the balls of her feet anxiously as she waits for it to rise, and then changes her mind and goes down the side stairs.

It plunges into the basement level, which is locked, at the moment. She pokes her head out of the ground floor doorway, examining her surroundings. The place is absolutely _filthy_ with dark-suited men. Almost all of them are too old for her, which is pitiful, because it’s a really good look.

She walks again like she owns the place, behind the light cover of potted plants and couches. No one pays her much mind; she assumes they just want to make sure no one leaves, which means she isn’t getting the night-time stroll she desperately needs right now. She enters the restaurant instead.

There’s a lot of them dining in here, and a few students huddled in small little packets, dressed the same as she is. Hana takes a seat by herself, and buries her head in her arms so her hair spills over them.

She sits like that for a while, until the sound of someone sliding in next to her hits her ears. She glances up to see Shouichi, looking ill and nervous.

“I wasn’t sure what happened to you,” he admits quietly. “They won’t tell us anything.”

“We’re all in the penthouses,” Hana says, just as quiet.

“Oh.” Shouichi mimics her posture, with his face half-obscured by the folded wall of his arms. He’s not wearing the ring anymore, and Hana doesn’t see any chain around the back of his neck.

“…Gokudera said something about you. Your rings.”

Shouichi curls up tighter. After a moment, he pulls out a large, circular device that looks like a mix between a seashell and a dial. He turns it a view times, and Hana feels her skin prickle.

“…It’s using the same stuff, you know?” Shouichi says quietly, looking at the dial. “…The energy from the ruins, I mean. That fire. Gokudera’s teacher said I could see it. I felt…I wanted to do what he said, because it made me feel important, I guess. But now that it’s over, I just feel…”

There’s a silence between them. Shouichi’s eyes are misty. “I don’t understand. Why would Umi-san have something like this?”

Shouichi has a crush like a normal person.

Warm, gooey feelings, and hope, and clinging to gestures of affection, wanting to return them every time. He has a penpal and he’s in love with her and she makes him feel a normal, completely average gooey feeling, and because he’s normal, because he doesn’t open her letters and think _do I have to kill for you?_ He’s miserable.

It’s not really the sort of behaviour you feel safe with, she realizes.

He head sinks back into her arms.

It’s not the sort of behaviour that makes her safe to be with either.

“…I left him.”

“Huh?”

“In the ruins. I froze up. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t confront someone going after me in the dark.” Hana curls up even tighter. “I don’t know how to use a sword. I just couldn’t do it. And he just went out all by himself, to fight this stranger who can destroy rock walls, and I _let him go._ ”

Shouichi is quiet, for a moment. “But…but we’re normal.”

“I know! I shouldn’t have to feel guilty for not wanting to duel a trained professional _blind,_ ” Hana says wetly, lifting her head to palm the dampness from her eyes, “but everyone was getting hurt, and I was supposed to _take care_ of him. They _shot_ this guy, right? For all I knew, Tsuna was going to get shot too. But I didn’t go. I was _so scared_. He could have _died_ and I hid in a closet. I didn’t do _anything_.”

Shouichi is quiet, because he knows he technically saved Gokudera’s life, even if it was mostly an accident.

“What am I going to tell Kyouko?” She asks, her voice thin and strained. “How am I going to look her in the eyes anymore?”

Those looks those boys have makes her skin crawl, sure, but when you’re in that kind of danger, all she wants is to be able to look at someone else like that too. All she wants is someone to look at her like that.

Because sure, it means you’re hyper-focused on someone and it’s unhealthy, maybe but when people actually need killing, it’s safe. Safer than anything.

Hana doesn’t feel very safe.

She doesn’t feel very anything.

“…I’m so _worried_ about him,” Hana wails. “I’m so worried that this is going to keep happening, and _I won’t be able to help_.”

Shouichi finally finds his words. “I…when Umi sent me the rings, she told me that she was trapped in her house.”

Hana looks up at him and bites her lip to keep it from wobbling.

“I think…it mostly feels like she has abusive parents, I guess. But she said she has a lot of friends all over Europe conspiring to get her out, and she needed me to keep her things safe.” Shouichi nudges the dial with a finger. “I felt important. I felt _so important_.”

Hana half-buries her face in her arms too.

“…And then, I…I was doing things that would make me more useful. I agreed to do a design request for Miura-san, and then I kept working with her. And I studied people, like, like a secret agent, I guess?” His speech starts coming out faster. “And I thought I was doing all these things to make me more useful but then I come here and the yakuza is talking about international politics and some murderous bastard named Zeni and all the _extremes_ they have to go to just to make sure they don’t start a _war_ or something, and all this time I’m thinking, with these people trying to manage all this mass underworld politics stuff and then trying to kill me, that uh…that this is, this is probably what Umi-san’s life is like, and she never actually needed me to be a secret agent,” Shouichi’s breath halts, “that maybe the entire reason I got the rings was because my job was to be _boring and useless_.”

He takes a moment to catch his breath, sucking in deep through his nose. Hana feels melancholy seep over the rawness of her heart.

Shouichi rubs his eyes, and his lip quivers in ways Hana wouldn’t let hers.

“…Everything seems so _big,_ ” he says in a tremulous voice. “And I was so _small_ this whole time.”

Hana slides her chin so she’s resting her head on one side. Her eyes feel sore.

“…Hey, Shouichi-kun?”

“H-Huh?” Shouichi jerks.

“We wrote some notes on all the magic stuff we saw. You want to talk about that?”

“Oh,” he says, a little startled. “Uhm, okay.”

“You got a room?”

“Yeah, they gave me…yeah.” Shouichi slowly stands and mops his eyes properly.

Hana follows him back out into the lobby, where no one notices them, and into the first floor hallways, where people peek at the sound of their footsteps but don’t dare poke their faces out. They go to Shouichi’s room, a dinky little thing with two beds with nice blankets and a TV.

Hana curls up on one of the beds.

“Is it alright if I stay here for the night?” She asks. “They put guards on my room, and I don’t think I can climb up.”

“Oh, uhm, okay,” Shouichi frets.

Hana falls back down and stares at the ceiling.

She doesn’t want to be in that room, where she feels _small,_ and has to reach out constantly just to feel normal and in control again.

She doesn’t feel strong anymore. She feels cowardly and broken and aimless, and the jittery sensation settling into her makes she wish she had her rifle, and it’s exhausting to pretend none of it affects her. It’s exhausting to blow off Tsuna’s resentment and the way Takeshi and Gokudera orbit around Tsuna like he’s going to keel over and die any minute, because he came _that close._

“Okay,” she says, after she takes some time to collect herself. “We covered six types of magic, so far.”

 

* * *

 

Benedetto doesn’t have a lot of experience with hyper-vigilance, but after a few hours of dealing with it, he’s decided he doesn’t like it.

Every second is either a threat or a crisis of identity, fighting for dominance in the hellscape that is his emotional state. He’s jumping at shadows and then wondering if he’s jumping at shadows because he was _made_ to do that. He feels like a core part of him has been ripped out and toyed with outside his vision and now he’s got something that’s mostly like him inside, but different in ways he can’t discern.

Mind control is _fucked_.

Someone gave him a shirt at some point. As he walks through the hall, he sees a lot of kids poking their heads out of rooms, and it’s tweaking him out; the concern about their safety in the hands of the mafia is offset by the conviction that the thought is fake, _fake_ , spun to make him more useful. Nothing feels real to him. _He_ doesn’t feel real to him.

Blond man drops him off at the door. Ben blinks at him, and then the steadily darkening street.

“I…I don’t understand?”

“You can go. You’ve done enough.”

“No, I…” Ben looks at him desperately. “You don’t understand, I wasn’t helping. You…do you know? I was being _controlled_ , y’know? I didn’t…I didn’t do any of that because I _wanted_ to.”

The man gives him a profoundly tired look. “Are you familiar with the Guiding Eyes?”

“N…Huh?”

“The Guiding Eyes. It’s a special trait Kouyou heirs have. Makes them very convincing debate partners, given enough eye contact,” the man explains.

Ben frowns. “The…the boy, he used his eyes to make me—”

“They’re not called _Controlling_ Eyes,” The man continues, with less patience. “They’re called _Guiding_ Eyes. Believe me, if there was a group capable of mind-controlling everyone they make eye contact with, they would be dead, and no one would be hearing about them.”

Ben feels more helpless the more the man talks, but it’s making his sense of self feel more tangible, so he tentatively allows the conversation to continue. “…What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you _did_ help those kids. That boy looked you in the eyes, found something you _wanted_ to do, and made it more important to you. It’s like…” He scratches his stubble and gives Ben a wry look. “…Wanting your tea to be really sweet, so they make you put twenty scoops instead of four. He can’t make you do anything you don’t really want to.”

“I…I tortured a man,” Ben says distantly. “I killed people _because he told me to_.”

“You killed people because that was something you were willing to do to make sure he got out safely. This power…it comes in degrees, and his ability _isn’t strong._ He barely has a handle on it. Trust me, I’m willing to believe in your character enough to let you walk out of town.”

“What…What about information? On our boss? The job?” Ben feels frantic in his desperation to be held responsible for _something_.

“We have a lot of prisoners,” the man says dryly.

_What now?_

“Why are you telling me this?” Ben rasps. He grasps the doorframe.

“We’re sending a car out. I thought it might be a nice idea to let a political asset come out of this feeling at least a little better about himself and our handling of the situation.”

“Oh.”

There’s a car sitting in front of the hotel, he sees now, illuminated from the inside. He’s not being let loose. It’s a deliberate decision, here.

_Do us a favour, and you’ll get out of jail free._

It makes him feel better, oddly enough.

He walks slowly to the car. There’s nothing for the hyper-vigilance, no matter how many rousing explanations shady bossmen can give him. Ben just hopes it’s something he can sleep off. For now, he flinches away from even the barest of movements and his eyes latch onto the back seat of the car with laser-like focus.

_Get out of jail free._

It wasn’t mind control, it was _him._ He’s the kind of person to rip off fingernails and shoot men in the head.

What a fucking absurd personal revelation to make while orbiting a middle-schooler.

He bows down to look into the car. A small figure is curled up into a ball, hands folded over his spiky bleached-blond hair.

“Hey. You holding up okay?”

The boy looks up. Ben can see the upturned brows and the dampness on his cheeks, but that’s pretty much it.

Oogawa Miki picks at the poorly-tied bandages over his eyes and says, very weakly, “not really.”

“Let me on. I’ll walk you home.”

Ben is the type of person who buckles under pressure, runs away from stress, and is willing to let people to get away with a whole lot of everything if it means if he can keep his head down.

But fuck is this kid scared, so he’s willing to be the kind of guy to torture people and shoot men through the eye socket if it means he gets home safe.

Mind manipulation is pretty fucked too, actually.

He gets in the car.

 

* * *

 

  
  


_The blade makes a damp, sucking noise each time it’s torn away, pulling at pockets of air and crushing the bones the shredded pieces of flesh still clinging on. The repetition is soothing, almost, a reassurance where the struggling had caused fear._

_There’s no struggling now, only a knife and a hollow, smooth sort of sensation over Tsuna’s mind, suffocating the harsh edges of his feelings, making it hard to think. He fixates on the repetition, hands running back and forth over the comforter. His vision is swimming._

“ _Hey, come take a look at this,” a woman says, and wherever she is, it isn’t any place Tsuna can see. The bed faces the open door. Back. Forth. Back._

“ _That doesn’t match the count,” a man says, and this one Tsuna sees._

_He’s looking right at him._

_There’s a sucking noise, wet, and damp, and spilling out across his hands._

_The man with cherry red hair and a suit and wide, wide eyes, staring, staring staring, back and forth back and forth. His hands leave red stains over the duvet._

“ _Oh god,” he whispers. “Oh, god.”_

“ _What?”_

“ _Nana’s…”_

_Takeshi’s body is laying cold and unseeing beside him, surrounded by the blood spray from the exit wound. Back, forth, back, forth._

_It’s so dark._

“ _Sick,” says the woman._

“ _No,” says the man. “I can fix this.”_

_His eyes are dark, rich, like blood orange._

“ _ **I can fix this.”**_

_Tsuna’s hands are wet and all he can taste is jasmine._

 

* * *

 

Tsuna wakes up covered in sweat and more nauseous than he’s ever felt in his entire life.

He can’t pin down why; fear, disgust, horror, actual illness, or maybe a blur of all of them. His heart is hammering, and his vision tunneled. He stumbles out of bed — nearly colliding with Gokudera’s — and shivers against the chill, or maybe the terror— he can’t tell what it is but it’s _eating him_.

He makes his way out, barely able to see in the shadows of pre-dawn. It takes a second for him to process where the bathroom is, and when he gets there, he doesn’t bother turning on the light, just falls to his knees in front of the toilet and heaves.

The effort feels like his entire body is trying to squeeze out the emotions and the contents of his stomach are just an unfortunate casualty. After the fourth run of retching, it starts being actively painful, and the only thing coming out is drool. His face is wet with the tears from the physical strain, and he mops them with a sweaty hand. He tries to gather in a few desperate gasps of air, before his body roils again and another helping of thick, viscous, and sour-tasting spittle comes drooling out of his mouth.

And then, in that moment, he doesn’t taste sour, or acid, just jasmine tea.

Tsuna spits a few times for good measure and tries to get up. It’s hard; he’s completely wrung out from the physical stress, and his legs are shaky. He has to get the taste out, though. So he soldiers on to the kitchen, cracks open the minibar, and throws back a tiny bottle of vodka.

It goes down easy, easy enough that Tsuna is conscious of the fact that he probably shouldn’t let anyone see him do this. Heat explodes in his chest, dispelling the chill, and the jasmine taste is burnt out with the harsh flavour. He finishes and grabs another, this time to drink slower until his hands stop shaking.

There’s not a lot of vodka left, which is concerning. It’s his poison of choice, in the same way saké is his father’s. He’s never had access to it this easily before, not like back at home, where getting something to drink is close to impossible and he has to ration out what little alcohol his dad left behind.

He’s never _had_ to drink before. He’s _never_ had a reaction this bad. The worst he ever got was _lonely_. The worst it’s ever been was never drink to _forget_ , it was drink to _reminisce_ ; of being tucked in his father’s arm and stealing sips from the bottle until his face was on fire and disorientation fell into sleep. All it ever was was loneliness.

Something’s wrong with him. Something’s wrong with him, _something’s wrong._

Tsuna hides the bottles under the sink and goes back to the bathroom. He switches on the light, wincing at the sudden exposure. He peels the sweat-sticky clothes off and climbs into the shower and runs it as hot as he can tolerate for as long as he can tolerate. Anything to get warm.

When his face feels a little too flushed, he turns it off, puts on replacement clothes, and furiously dries his hair with a towel.

He feels better.

Well, no he doesn’t, but he feels stable, which is good enough.

He stands in front of the bedroom, feeling like it would be a truly champion effort to actually climb back into his damp, sweat-soaked bed and go back to sleep. He entertains the thought of climbing into Hayato’s instead, of just wrapping his arms around him and pressing his head against his spine, a faint imitation of how it used to be with his mom, before.

 _Before_ , in that faint space between one event and the other, between normality and the false promise that he didn’t even remember being given. _Before_ , a period in his life he had at this point thought just wasn’t worth caring about anymore, some obscure unpleasant sequence of events that happened in his past. _Before,_ when waking up alone in a bed to big for him made him feel…

Tsuna adjusts his jaw and turns away from the door.

He pads to the balcony, out into cool air. It’s pre-dawn, the sun only casting a halo beyond the horizon, making the sky just the barest bit brighter around the edges. It’s still something you could call night. The air flutters his hair and his clothes, and he’s filled with the power to run, but not with the willingness to take that extra step.

Slowly, he sits down and presses his forehead against the cool metal railing, sucking in breath after breath, until the cold starts seeping in past the heat, leaving him with his usual empty chill. He doesn’t go back into the suite; it would shatter the illusion.

With his feet dangling over the edge, he feels an odd craving for someone else to catch him here, alone and contemplating the ground. It’s only to trace routes he could follow, but he wants to hear it anyway.

_Are you going to jump?_

Something’s wrong.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahahaha surprise, narrative cohesion
> 
> Tsuna's origin story is a complex web of Absolutely Horrible, and I've actually been picking at it since the first arc; I hope it's starting to come together more clearly, both in regards to what happened to him and why the Kouyou are relevant.
> 
> (For reference, Tsuna's had other flashbacks/dream sequences before, in Introduction:Fantasy and Willpower:Underfoot.)


	26. The Recovery Of Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Body horror, reference to child death, blood/nosebleeds, pseudo-gore, being violent with medical needles

If the boy is one thing, it is quiet.

The Blue Thorn goes through the air with barely a sound, creating a lazy loop of black-dotted cobalt through the air, before constricting. The metal weight on the end guides a path, a loose hook ready to catch and wrap as it swings across the road.

Romolo Zeni raises his hand casually, and the rose-vine flops uselessly against the ground, unable to pass the halo of electricity around him.

The static clings to the metal weight, but it’s not _true_ electricity, so it does little more than react to a possible conduit. Romolo tilts his head as Gi U stumbles out of the woods. He looks like shit. He barely looks human. The pale scars of old exit wounds along his legs are red and irritated from coming apart and sealing back up again, and he had lost his coat at some point, showing off the white roses dotting his flesh, across the lines of his shoulders. They match the massive blossom coming out of his head, made up of peeled skin, if the irritated corners on his face mean anything. He’s _oozing_ power, the Cloud Flames radiating him like a miasma.

He’s generating new cells at an insane rate, but obviously not fast enough. The boy’s half-dead on his feat, and the stupid little shit still wants a fight.

“ _Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar, liar, liar!”_ Gi U screams, charging despite how it’s an obvious struggle to do anything more challenging than an awkward hobble. He swings three sets this time, and Romolo jumps. Four follow him up, using less aerodynamics and more raw power from the boy’s own Aura.

Another wave of static, and the vines don’t make it all the way up. Romolo’s jump arced backwards, so he’s easily out of range when his polished shoes touch the asphalt.

“Such a simple job, and you couldn’t even do that,” Romolo tuts. “After all I’ve done for you.”

“You’ve done _NOTHING!”_ Gi U roars back, his already-high-pitched voice wheezing and squeaky from stress and fatigue. The four vines follow Romolo again, and Romolo only has to lean back a little to dodge the sloppy arc.

“I’ve given you so much information on the Green Door, haven’t I?”

“ _USELESS!”_ Gi U screams. “I _LIVED_ IT! YOU JUST GAVE ME THINGS I HAD! PLACES I KNOW I’VE BEEN!”

“Honestly, what’s gotten you so upset? Surely you already knew.”

“You told me I had my _history_ all here,” Gi U whines. He sags, barely strong enough to hold himself up. “You told me my roots were going to _be here_.”

“I find it terribly rude of you to find yourself in a position to discover that and _not bring anything back_ ,” Romolo snarls.

“I didn’t,” Gi U spits back. He crosses his arms in an obvious pulling gesture, and Romolo realizes the sagging of his body wasn’t from weakness, but strain; pouring out of his fingers are countless glittering lines, seeping like spiderwebs from his flesh.

It’s all he has time to digest before three blades are tugged from where they were embedded in the trees on either side of the road and sent spinning, each of the blade’s tips driven into Romolo’s body.

Gi U really does sag this time. He falls to his knees, gasping for air, trembling from how much body mass he lost in the onslaught. He can’t fight anymore. He can’t even stand.

Romolo carefully takes the handle of the sword sticking out of his stomach and tears it free from the lines wrapped around it.

The sword hadn’t even broken skin, but it ruined his suit.

“Asari’s Four Irregular Swords,” Romolo notes, giving it an experimental twirl. “And yet I only count _three_.”

Gi U stares at him, clearly not understanding. Gi U is a child, and a very small one, at that; he doesn’t understand the concept of information gathering, beyond watching a target until it’s ripe for robbing. Romolo had spent a year feeding him information, but had divulged very, very little about himself.

Like, for example, how he can’t be killed.

Romolo pulls the second blade away from his lower back, where it would have impaled his kidneys. “Aren’t you a disobedient creature.”

“That’s not fair,” Gi U wails.

“Very few things in life are,” Romolo agrees. He takes the last one from his shoulder, and holds the three of them like a bouquet in his arms. “It’s time to come home.”

“No, nonononono,” Gi U sobs. He’s sick with Cloud Flames now, a infected wound upon the world that makes moss grow between his toes and the air almost unbreathable. The little black rectangle hanging from his neck is glowing hot purple now, reacting to its host’s immanent collapse.

“You’re so stubborn,” Romolo sighs. “Did you think you were going to get everything you wanted by the end of this?”

“Aaahh…uhh… _uaggh_ …” Gi U hiccups. He’s falling to the ground, now.

“You were nothing but a bauble from the start,” Romolo hisses. “Something to utilize while it’s still useful and put back in the display case when I’m finished. You think I was going to be defeated by a ten-year-old too broken to be human?”

“’M not broken,” Gi U sobs, grinding his face against the ground. _“’M not…”_

“You were a failure the moment you were born.”

Gi U screams.

Vines burst from his limbs, nearly too fast for his body to regenerate, leaving thick indents in his flesh where all his body could do was put skin there and hope for the best. There are dozens of them, moving in tandem to the four weighted ones already sitting at Zeni’s feat, a twisting, vicious monster.

They both know that it won’t hurt Romolo when it catches him.

…But it’ll be an annoyance.

Romolo dances out of the way of the maelstrom of Blue Thorns, charges the claw ring on his right hand, and—

A helicopter comes flying in.

The Blue Thorns had reached high above the treeline; someone must have seen them.

Romolo clicks his tongue as the tornado sucks in Gi U’s limp form, nothing but bone and a vacuum-sealed packet of organs jutting out of what would otherwise be a fleshy skeleton. Either the boy is dead, and Romolo can’t grab him without being seen, or he needs time to re-absorb the vines, which Romolo can’t give him without being seen.

With a sigh, he dives back into the woods and out of sight.Nothing wasted opportunities, in this town. The whole thing makes him sick.

Still, he considers as he tosses a sword in the air idly. It’s not as if he had come out of it _completely_ empty-handed.

 

* * *

 

Miki falls asleep in the car, so Ben ends up having to carry him out on his back. The driver watches him the whole time, but it looks like they’re simply being dropped off. Miki’s house is pretty out-of-the-way — it’s not like it’s isolated, Ben can see two houses just down the road, but they’re pretty far apart — and nestled into the edge of the forest. It’s a tiny two-story building that looks like it might have been a shop once, and the wooden paneling is well-aged. It’s completely in the shadow of the trees around it.

Ben hoists Miki up higher and approaches the building. The lights are on, so one of the kid’s parents have to be home. He tilts to the side so he can spare a hand to knock.

The person who answers is a shorter man with unruly dark hair wrangled into a messy ponytail and a weathered face that looks like it gets a lot of sun. He’s wearing a tacky T-shirt and glasses clearly too big for his face.

“Miki?” He asks faintly.

“He passed out on the car ride over,” Ben explains, hoisting Miki up again. “You his pops?”

“Oh— yes, I’m Oogawa Ryuuga…” He looks at Ben with furrowed brows.

“Benedetto. Call me Ben. He stumbled into mafia business, so I’m effectively his bodyguard for…god knows how long. Can I…?”

Ryuuga looks nervously between Ben and Miki, but eventually steps back to let them inside.

The house looks as cramped as Ben thought it might be. The first room is open, indeed like a storefront, but it’s crammed with paintings, crumpled newspaper, two couches, and several tables, with the kitchen squeezed into the far corner.

“You an artist?”

“Er— yes, I do a lot of landscapes. My wife is…” Ryuuga looks around idly. “My wife works afternoon till night. Or at least she should. She stays up a lot.”

Ben circles around a pile of paintings to get to the stained couch. From here, he can see different parts of the floor have massive ink drawings of kanji on them. “Those yours?”

“No, that’s Miki’s work. He’s a shodou artist. Can you read kanji…?”

“Oh, er, no. I only speak Japanese.” Ben rests Miki on the couch and leans in closer to inspect it. The thick, rough strokes convey some level of emotion. Ben can understand why it’s considered an art form.

“…I-If you don’t mind, what’s happened to him?”

Ben turns to look behind him, and realizes Miki’s eyes are still bandaged. “Oh, his eyes are stuck in active mode. He wants me to take him to the main house tomorrow to go get them fixed.”

Ryuuga relaxes and flashes a tense smile. “He’s not fond of the ability.”

“I’ll bet. I think the only reason they let me tag along is because I don’t like it either.” Ben collapses on the couch next to Miki and rubs his temples. What a fucking day it’s been.

“Can I get you…?”

“Nah, I’m about ready to pass out. Can you wake me up when your wife gets here, so I can tell you both what’s been happening?”

“Right. I’ll…Okay.” Ryuuga artfully navigates around the cluttered living space to the door next to the kitchen area.

Miki stirs, and Ben turns his head to look at him. He can’t tell if he’s waking up with those bandages in the way, but he definitely doesn’t want them undone. He reaches over and scratches the kid’s head a little. Miki tosses it off and leans over to use the armrest as a pillow. Ben leaves him alone.

He can hear Ryuuga talk to Miki’s mom over the phone, and water boiling, and a fan running somewhere in the house. Trees rustle outside. It’s so peaceful it’s painful. Ben doesn’t feel like he belongs, but he doubts his feelings matter much.

He closes his eyes. He’ll get his own apartment soon, and figure things out from there.

 

* * *

 

Oregano has been out cold for eight hours, which isn’t a lot when you’ve been awake for three days, but it’s enough to not annihilate all who wrong her, and it helps her digest some of her stress.

Feeling marginally better, she goes out into the morning to attack the mysterious disappearance of Superbi Squalo, because that’s her job.

It’s a decently warm Wednesday morning, and the CEDEF is making an effort to look good for the citizens of Miyazawa by cleaning up the rest of the litter and even attacking the graffiti, all dressed in unsuspecting grey T-shirts and denim jeans. Oregano supposes they look like a volunteer group. She herself has just removed the jacket and tie, to rely on a more ‘casual formal’ sort of look. She tends to look like that anyway; her straw-coloured hair often falls free from theloose bun she puts it in, since Oregano has always relied on sheer force of Aura to keep it from whipping in her face. She is often and unpleasantly reminded that this is a trick she taught to Squalo, and thus a trick Squalo is now notorious for.

The student’s luggage is being moved into the lobby, where the students can pick it up. They’re a lot more relaxed now that the small army of people in suits have lost visibility, and sort through their things while chatting amicably. There’s one or two kids squabbling over stolen goods, but nothing too outrageous.

As for the remaining kids, they’re holed up in their rooms. Some of them cluster together, now that it’s clear that the CEDEF isn’t stopping them; they’re here to arrest everyone and make it feel like nothing happened in Miyazawa, and there’s no need to threaten children. All the yakuza healthy enough to help are outside, working on the clean-up. It has the secondary benefit of making the students hesitant to leave.

Outside, she meets up with the tracking team, set up in a van.

“I can’t believe you want us to go after Superbi Squalo,” the woman in charge mutters. “Probably got all sorts of vanishing tricks up his sleeve.”

“He’s a master of elimination, not sneakiness. The leader of the Varia is invariably a battering ram where a silent killer fails.” One of Squalo’s excuses for demolishing a museum was ‘we tried to slit his throat but it didn’t work, so we slit his throat even harder’. One time, long before Oregano was in charge of anything more than file cabinets, she heard that the previous boss, Xanxus, caused a forest fire that raged for three days. During the wet season. To get at two men.

Each leader within the Varia has their own squad to work as assassination maintenance, like, for example, Lussuria and his trap-making squad, who specialize in quickly making secluded corners into arenas where the slaughter can proceed smoothly, or their best multi-range assassin, Levi, using his squad to clear a region before striking a target, and spiriting that target away once he’s done, giving him the best speed record.

The bosses, though, from Tyr to Squalo, just _explode_ at their targets. They’re duelists by trade, and leave destruction in their wake.

(Not that the others aren’t a problem; Belphegor tends to kill a lot of people he shouldn’t, and Mammon can’t _breathe_ without pulling multiple people into a bankruptcy-inducing con.)

“Still, any educated Flame user has at least a basic idea of how to avoid being seen,” the woman mutters. She turns to look behind her. “Oi, bring out the tracker.”

A man — not entirely dedicated to the tracking mission, based on the unassuming grey shirt and jeans uniform — comes out from the front with a large cage, and drags it a little until it slides down to the ground. It looks large enough to hold anything, short of a literal lion.

“This is one of our tracking dogs,” the woman explains. “Oddo specializes in locating Flame users above a certain saturation level. Anyone who uses their Dying Will Flames with any sort of regularity will immediately be located, even from a distance of many kilometres.”

“The hair thing,” Oregano recalls. Squalo should be constantly manifesting an Aura at all times to keep that mane tamed.

“Yes, the hair thing. You rarely enter combat, so while Oddo will find you interesting, he should have no trouble moving on.”

The man pulls at the door. Oregano sucks in a breath, waiting.

Out trots a small dog that could only be described as a Pomeranian, but more.

Its black fur is a puffy mane, capped with an explosion of hair at the tail. The only real differences she can tell is that it has a larger body, the face is longer, and the ears are less poof and more ear, shaped with distinct wedges, like a fox.

“A Vulpino Italiano breed,” the tracker explains. “They’re typically white. This one has melanism. Like a black panther?”

“It’s…”

“Cute, I know.” He steps around the animal, which is sitting on its haunches and looking around, casual as anything, panting heavily. “We don’t want to use big dogs. People are less likely to react to something small and unassuming.”

The man picks up for her. “Oddo has been positively conditioned. When he finds a strong Flame user, he’ll be very affectionate. It makes him more reliable to follow.”

“I…see.”

“Let’s set him off.” The dog caretaker takes off Oddo’s collar and claps his hands. “Oddo! Go get ‘em!”

The dog barks twice and takes off down the street.

“We have a chip installed just in case you lose him,” the tracker says.

Oregano sighs and starts running.

She keeps up with the animal for a few streets, until they get to the border of the city, in a smaller hotel, where the dog stops and starts barking its little head off.

Oregano doesn’t pull out a gun — she doubts getting shot would stop Squalo, and if she pulled it off, he would hold it against her for ages — but she does let her Will seep into her hand, making her nerves tingle with the stimulus.

Carefully, she tries the handle. It opens, and Oddo pushes it all the way open in his eagerness to find his target.

Oregano follows, primed to bat a sword away, and stops when she sees the living room.

Sitting there on the floor, balancing funds, is the Varia treasurer, Mammon.

The little baby looks at the dog, then Oregano.

“Looking for somebody?”

“Where’s Squalo?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Oregano clicks he tongue in frustration and tries to herd the dog back out. “No, Oddo. Wrong person. Let’s go.”

But the dog just races around her legs and sits next to Mammon again, panting heavily. He twitches every now and then, like he’s hoping to be played with.

Mammon looks at the dog, and then at Oregano.

And smirks.

The Arcobaleno do that a lot. The smirking. They’re all babies, and once _one_ of them found out that smirking on a baby looks excessively cunning and unsettling, _all_ of them were doing it. Even the outsider of the group, Lal Mirch, has an unconscious tick of smirking like that when she finds something a bit too silly.

They’re all also adults, as far as Oregano knows — one of the known members, Lal, has to be over thirty — and god only knows why they look like this. The condition has been recorded every now and then for the past 400 years, so Oregano can only assume that it’s some sort of extremely rare disorder, or something. Some of the CEDEF’s rank and file have put their money on ‘djinni curse’.

The CEDEF isn’t actually sure Mammon is an Arcobaleno… _On paper._ It’s pretty much an unspoken fact, at this point. So she’s not being smirked at by a creepy baby. She’s being smirked at by a grown adult much older than Oregano herself who knows exactly what they’re doing.

“Oh, go fling yourself off your old wizard tower,” Oregano grumbles at the tiny Illusionist. She pulls out her phone and redials Squalo’s number. It goes to voicemail. “ _SQUALO,_ You can’t leave Japan without a report! If I hear you’re in Italy, _I will be forced to assume you’re not headed home and call in the Vindice for conspiring against an allegiance._ ”

She hangs up and glares at the dog, who has curled up next to Mammon and taken to leaning on them. Mammon strokes the animal thoughtfully, still smirking, but darker now. There’s no joy in it.

“Will you stop him?” They ask. “If you found him.”

“Please, they’re both awful. Given the opportunity, I’d prefer Xanxus. If he wants to go back to Italy, fine, but I’m not letting him wander about _planning things_. He can help Xanxus the normal, politically conscious way.” She sinks into the nearby chair and kicks open the minibar. The skin of Mammon’s face pulls — as if they were raising their eyebrows under the shadows of their hood — as Oregano takes a bottle between two feet and tosses it into her hands. It turns into a speculative lowering of the mouth as Oregano tosses it back.

“A bad week for you, isn’t it.”

“ _You’re_ the best tracker Vongola has,” Oregano sighs. “The blood maps you make...”

“Mu…I’ve become sick very frequently,” Mammon hums, “so I’ve taken to snot. It gives me something to do with the fluids.”

“That’s _disgusting_.”

“It just has to be my dead tissue. I could also do something with hair or nail clippings,” Mammon says with the careless humour of the geriatric.

Oregano drinks her second bottle a little slower. “…That boy, Xanxus. He was _exceptional_.”

Mammon goes quiet.

“He was the perfect boss. Cutthroat efficiency. They put him through so many negotiations. You just wanted to _listen_ to him.” Oregano closes her eyes and leans her head back. “ _I_ wanted to listen to him. But Iemitsu never liked him.”

“Why is that?” Mammon asks, turning towards her fully now. “The Ninth said some tripe about peace and empathy. I don’t buy it.”

“Nothing wrong with peace when you’re that willing to cut it down, you know. Being cordial when you have the power to wipe out the enemy is just about the best technique there is when it comes to staying in control. It’s what made him so appealing.” Oregano’s brow furrows. “…Iemitsu…he wasn’t concerned with that, though. What he was worried about was…”

She sucks in a breath through her nose and lets it out again.

“…When Iemitsu was younger, he interacted a lot with the local yakuza. They had a sort of…cult-like structure to them. Their creed has always been family. _We protect our own_. Not just the blood family, not just their _clan_ , but even ordinary citizens under their care. And Xanxus…Xanxus Rocco Di Vongola doesn’t protect anyone. Strong enough to accumulate power, but not enough to keep it, was what he called it.”

“And what has Timoteo Rocco Di Vongola protected?”

“Federico Fiore,” Oregano snorts, loudly. “A boy who won’t be king.”

“I heard Reborn is making him.”

“He can _try_. I was assigned to his reports before Squalo started blowing things up,” which happened to be the exact time period when Squalo found out Federico was both Not Dead and Going To Lead The Vongola, “he has no ambition to lead, or even to maintain contact with his father. He’s got a teenage son. He’s a _kindergarten teacher_.”

“A mobster we can believe in,” Mammon says dryly.

Oregano rolls her eyes and takes another gulp of alcohol. “He’s worthless. The only other possible alternative is even _worse_. Either we wait for Federico’s son to reach age eighteen, or we get someone to teach Xanxus manners. Guess what’s easiest.”

“Mu…He _did_ try to assassinate his own father.”

“I like Xanxus more, honestly.” She cricks her jaw left and right. “He was only _seventeen_. Even Squalo learned a modicum of maturity since he was seventeen, and Squalo’s entire personality is just screaming and being inefficient.”

Mammon makes a non-committal noise.

“…You going to tell me where Squalo is?”

“100,000 yen and I’ll give you a hint.”

The original price was 500,000, so Oregano assumes this is Mammon’s version of being friendly.

“No.”

“900 euros.”

“You can’t bargain _up_.”

“1,000. Final offer.”

Oregano huffs and slips from the chair, ignoring how the dog won’t follow. “I’ll find him myself.”

 

* * *

 

It’s strange, being cared for when all you want to do is care for someone else.

Hayato wakes up to Tsuna staring off into space on the balcony, only responding to his presence with a sidelong glance his way. Then he continues staring, at the ground below. Hayato joins him, because a sidelong glance isn’t a strong indicator towards someone’s emotional state, and Hayato is pretty bad at reading people anyway.

“How are you holding up?”

Tsuna is silent.

Hayato’s eyes trace the ground that Tsuna is looking at. In the bright sunlight of the morning, the activity of the CEDEF is clearly apparent; they’re cleaning up. Probably trying to make it look like none of this ever happened. The dead bodies out front are long since gone, not even a bloodstain left.

“…You thinking of getting out of here?”

Tsuna’s eyes flick up again, more clear now. “I wouldn’t be able to.”

“I could help.”

Tsuna’s eyes stay on Hayato, but his head tilts to the side. Then they flick back to the land beyond the bars, now a side-eye from that perspective. “…I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Too dangerous?”

“…I’d keep running.” Tsuna closes his eyes. “I’d keep running forever. You’ll turn around and I’ll be in China.”

Something cold settles tight in Hayato’s heart.

“I could go with you. There’s lots to do in China.”

“I’d be running from you too.” Tsuna covers his face. “I’d be running from Takeshi, and Hacchan too. I’d be running from everyone. I’d be running from Kyouko. I’d run forever.”

Hayato’s mouth parts.

Then he sits down.

His idea of a mature adult was incredibly limited, before Tsuna, which was only a week and a half ago. It began and ended at ‘casual confidence, smoke cigarettes aggressively, get in the face of anyone who doubts you’. The problem is, though, is that Tsuna is not really the type to respond to any of that and has _mastered_ ‘effortlessly cool’, and yet Hayato is supposed to be the boss of him.

He swallows the dryness in his throat. The thing is, effortlessly cool doesn’t make Tsuna any less brittle, or any less pathetic. In fact, all it’s gotten him so far is a black eye and some broken ribs. Tsuna always seems to be working best when looking at someone else. His peak efficiency happens when he’s in a subordinate role.

It’s like a horrible funhouse mirror that picks out all of the flaws in Hayato’s idea of what a mature person looks like and reflects them back at him in the form of the world’s tiniest seventh-grader. Everything Hayato thought meant _competent_ and _in-control_ just reads as _don’t let them see how pathetic you really are_.

Real power, real dominance, was never that. It was Yamazaki’s slimy words and eyes that seem to flay the skin they dragged along, exposing people’s beings so he can sift through the blood for something he wants. When Reborn was talking about people who want to see you grow, that was what he meant; someone so comfortable with power that they look down at you and expect you to gut yourself to show what you’re really about. They could act like fools while winding your sinews along like embroidery thread. In those woods, for the first time in forever he felt honestly _scared_ , not of a threat, but of being controlled. He felt scared that this entire time, he wasn’t making allegiances, he was being groomed by someone with so much more control than he ever had.

He hasn’t really had time to digest how wrong he was, but looking at Tsuna now, and how he’s holding himself with awkward half-attention, Hayato feels a revelation come on. It’s not sudden or anything, it’s just easier to define the concepts he’s already figured out, more or less.

Tsuna’s a teenage boy, just like him.

And Hayato wants, more than anything, to make sure he turns out okay.

“When I was nine years old,” he says carefully, “I ran away from home.”

Tsuna’s eyes blink open with a startled flutter.

Hayato almost chokes up. Years of conditioning are screaming at him to shut up and _don’t let them see_. But the point of being a teenage boy is that you _aren’t_ mature, maybe, or something, this is really new to him. Basically, if he talks about his feelings to someone as fragile as him, they’ll have a…they’ll have a _thing_.

That sounds right. Hayato can’t qualify this in diagrams, but that sounds roughly like the thing he’s supposed to do here. It’s not like he can tell Tsuna to suck it up; Tsuna doesn’t _have_ anything to suck up. He’s all dry. That’s why Hayato needs to be here. Hayato is here to do all the sucking.

“I…had a lot of goals. And I couldn’t trust my family. I still can’t. I…I still hate them. All of them. Or at least resent them. But I had a sister. And when I was really, really little, she was everything to me.”

Tsuna is focused on him, rapt with attention, and Hayato feels a little disconcerted; it always seemed exceptionally hard to get Tsuna to focus on _anything_. Even when looking directly at a person, he never seemed to be _looking_ at them. Something to do with how his eyes track.

Tsuna’s eyes are reading, now, full of little twitches, almost wild. It takes an embarrassingly long time for Hayato to identify it, but it’s been so normal to him through his childhood, it’s usually more strange to see when people _don’t_ do it.

Hyper-vigilance. He may be sitting still, but he’s keyed up beyond all natural sensibilities.

The cold grip in his chest tightens, and Hayato entertains ‘ _he’d never be like this if I was there for him’_ before ruthlessly stamping it out. Tsuna had absolved him from all responsibility, and now all he’s responsible for is taking care of things after the fact. What’s important is getting the point across right _now_. If he can’t do this much, he may as well fling himself off the balcony right now, because he’s obviously good for nothing.

“…I don’t like my sister all that much, nowadays, but back then, I loved her,” he continues slowly. “…She had…abilities. Like the people who attacked us. Like the ruin’s…” He rubs a hand over his mouth. “…And they recruited her. She became part of the mafia. I wanted to follow her in, and be where she was.”

He sucks in a breath and holds it tight like he’s trying to crush it inside his lungs, then slowly exhales when he’s sure the tension isn’t too high to choke back down again.

“But in the end, all I ever did was run away from her. I don’t know why.” Hayato ducks his head, feeling embarrassed saying it out loud. “I was going to take on the whole mafia world for her and all I ever did was run away.”

Tsuna’s body language is shy, now. A three-quarters look and an idle picking at the hem of his shorts; it sits strange on him. Hayato edges closer, and Tsuna easily opens his legs up so their knees can touch.

Hayato is worried about him. He’s worried about a lot of things.

“…Even when I ended up rejecting her outright, she always loved me,” he soldiers on. “I think she can’t help it. She was always going to help me, whether I asked or not. Even if I started hating her a little too.” Hayato takes another steeling breath and lets it out with a whoosh, looking at Tsuna straight-on. “You _can_ run away, but nothing’s going to really _go_ away. It’s just going to be your problem, still, but somewhere else. And you’ll feel awful.”

“I don’t think…” Tsuna’s nervous little gesture seems to travel, from his shorts to his wrist, gripped in a repetitive turning motion. Tsuna looks away. “I don’t think I’d ever make the decision to run away. Not seriously, I mean. It’s just…I might be wired that way.”

“Okay,” says Hayato, and he tries really hard not to preen that they have something so deeply embedded in their personalities in common, because it’s not… _actually_ a good thing to run away from emotional responsibilities, Hayato is pretty sure. It makes sense to run away from Bianchi; she wants him to come ‘home’. But it would be a good idea to maybe… _address_ …the problems. That happen. Somehow.

Fucking christ being a mature role model is hard.

“Do you think you need to…to talk? About what happened?”

“No,” Tsuna says quickly, snapping his head up. He freezes, and sags back down again, avoiding eye contact. “…Yesterday was…I was upset Takeshi got hurt, and it shook me up.”

“You look more than a little shook up.”

Tsuna shakes his head. “…No, it’s not…it’s not that. I was just thinking about…” The words catch on his open mouth, making a sort of creaking noise at the back of his throat when they don’t exit. Tsuna swallows and presses his head hard against the thin balusters of the balcony railing. His eyes shine.

It occurs to Hayato something is terribly wrong, because as far as he knows, visibly showing emotion is a thing Tsuna doesn’t _do_.

“Something happened when I was younger,” Tsuna manages to continue. “I had…I didn’t _forget_. It just didn’t matter much to me. I didn’t care. I— I think. But I just can’t cope with it anymore.”

“When you were younger?” Hayato hadn’t heard anything about that, even as he mentally replays Tsuna flinching away from being touched without initiating it, and the escape compulsions. The reports made it sound like bullying. When they met, it just read like Tsuna gave up on dealing with it and made a habit of ditching when situations were too much trouble, which makes sense, considering the last time he stood his ground he got hospitalized.

“I…” Tsuna’s eyes do something wild. “I don’t think I want to talk about that.”

“Oh. Uhm, okay. I’m…you know I’m always here if you need me.”

“Thank you,” Tsuna mumbles.

Hayato’s lost him; Tsuna pulls his leg away so he can curl up against the entire railing. The conversation is dead, and Hayato has no idea whether or not he did okay.

He frowns and gets up. “…I’m going to go check in on those two clowns.”

Tsuna’s hand spasms around his wrist, and Hayato has the odd thought that he’s going to snap it. But he was just startling again, and it rests back into the repetitive movement, almost like he’s massaging it.

“…Okay.”

And that’s that.

Hayato hops up to the roof. They weren’t kidding about it being an easy stroll; it’s a hell of a security risk, and it makes his skin crawl to think of what might have happened if there were other guests. He looks to the skies for helicopters to spot him, but there’s nothing there; just a peaceful day, light cloud cover, and a seasalt breeze.

Yamamoto and Kurokawa’s suite is quiet when Hayato slides down again. The door is still open. He’ll have to yell at one or both of them for being so careless, but right now, he’s going to yell at them for sleeping in. It’s already _eight_.

“Oi! Kurokawa!” Hayato yells, since Kurokawa tends to be the leader in any given social situation, thus giving her rank over Yamamoto, who Hayato does not know and does not care to know, beyond _‘strong’_ and _‘will keep Tsuna safe’_. So far he’s done a stand-up job. Sasagawa is also strong and safe, but he didn’t really get the opportunity to exemplify those traits in a combat situation. Maybe he should delegate based on context. Does Tsuna know how to delegate?

Hayato stops in the bedroom. There’s only one occupied bed.

“Kurokawa?” He asks, unsure now.

…She must have…snuck into one of the remaining two suites, he thinks. That makes sense.

Yamamoto is a big, obvious lump, the angles alone giving his form away. Hayato huffs with frustration and marches up to the bed.

“Hey, wake up. If you’re still not feeling well, we’ll force them to get you a medic.”

Yamamoto doesn’t respond. Hayato doesn’t hear the deep, slow breathing signaling sleep.

“Oi. Yamamoto.”

Silence.

The cold, tight feeling comes back.

Hesitantly, Hayato picks up the edge of the blanket sitting over Yamamoto’s head. He hesitates there, still listening. It’s just quiet.

He picks the edge up and pulls, and his stomach churns at the damp, sticky noise of fabric being pulled away from a tacky surface. The noise stops after a certain stretch, but the fact it happened at all is making Hayato’s teeth buzz with panicked, nervous energy and poor oxygen circulation.

He pulls it farther, sees the red stain, and then yanks.

The tight thing in his stomach plummets.

In Italy, there was a ‘watch your own’ culture that held everyone together, and Hayato’s own were the other street rats trying to make a living off poverty. There weren’t many opportunities for nine-year-olds with no house and no family, so a lot of them got picked up by more unpleasant Blackmarket corners; they became drug runners and spies and dealers. All of them were deadly jobs.

They always tried their best to keep track of each other, even if they barely knew each other’s names. Even if they moved on. One early morning, an adult dealer held them to that habit, asking if they could ID a body. See if it was from their neighbourhood or someone else’s. Hayato went, since most of the people in charge of that sort of thing were out.

The dealer took him to a riverbank. The body was stashed under the bridge, tucked away in a corner out of sight. It was dragged for Hayato to see, but no matter what that thing looked like in life, Hayato could never recognize it the way it was.

The thing wasn’t a body so much as a bloated, fat hunk of meat. It had absorbed a lot of water, making its cheeks thick and round, and the lips huge and misshapen on the wide expanse that used to be a face. The skin of the thing was a pure stretch of purple stains on milky white, like all the veins in the body had simply seeped apart, letting the blood sink into the cells of the body to turn it all to pudding. When the dealer tried to carry it, the meat slid around gruesomely on the body’s bones. To top off the unpleasantness, the stomach was protruding, practically exploding with trapped gasses from the corpse breaking down.

As far as Hayato can tell, the only difference between that body and Yamamoto Takeshi is that Yamamoto’s got blood seeping out of his face, too.

He breathes once.

Twice.

And finds a phone.

 

* * *

 

“Can’t you hire any beautiful women, Yuuma-kun?”

The bar is empty, this early in the day, but Shamal has never had a real distinction for when a good time to drink is. As far as he’s concerned, ‘the time you can have alcohol in you’ works fine enough.

He’s had plenty of opportunity to. As loathe as he is to so much as _examine_ a man, Reborn had given him some good perks in exchange for his services as a doctor, along with an assurance that Reborn and his tiny baby medical degree could take of actual ailments. One of these perks was constant access to a bar.

No one wants him there, but Shamal doesn’t particularly mind, seeing as he has no interest in them whatsoever anyway. Yuuma, Federico’s…Guardian? After-work friend? Personal bartender? Runs it, and the company is usually just Toru — Federico’s son — waiting there before he can safely be walked to school.

Toru is…something of an anxiety of Shamal’s. The main thing is, Reborn doesn’t bully Toru. Federico would single-handedly find a way to break Reborn’s body and spirit if he tried it, ‘world’s strongest hitman’ be damned, sure, but Toru seems to attract doting wherever he goes, even from Reborn, which is impressive for a fifteen-year-old European boy. Usually at this age they get ugly, ruddy-skinned, and rude.

Shamal doesn’t like him. Sure, he oozes cute — fluffy blond hair twisted into thick, wavy curls, flawless rosy doll skin, big ol’ eyes behind big, old-fashioned glasses, and a giant stuffed panda bear teddy being lugged around like the comfort object of an anxious five-year-old — but the blank stares set him on edge. Toru is spacey, certainly, but he’s far too clever by half.

It smells of powerful traumatized children. Shamal doesn’t like it. Powerful traumatized children rarely work out. He should know; he was one, at one point.

Yuuma is ignoring him, so Shamal has to spend time alone with Toru’s stare.

“Meet any cute girls at school today?”

Toru blinks owlishly.

“…No.”

“Really? They aren’t falling at your feet?”

Toru gives the rest of the bar a sidelong look. It’s like avoiding eye contact, but several degrees more calculating. “…I’m unpopular with my schoolmates.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Shamal says dryly, taking his drink when Yuuma hands it to him without glancing up.

The comment flies over Toru’s head. “It’s because they think I’m childish.”

“Maybe if you’d stop lugging that teddy around, you’d get a date.”

Toru _Looks_ at him and Shamal is hit by a wave of dizzying discomfort that settles deep in the marrow of his bones.

The boy blinks again and looks down. “Papa made it for me.”

And that’s that.

There’s something really fucked up about Federico’s kid, and Shamal hopes it’s the type of thing you can mend with therapy and a lot of hugs and kisses.

Shamal nurses his beer and gossips about his love life for a bit. There is exactly two women in Federico’s entourage, and one of them is a teenager he personally babysat years ago. She’s cute and he likes playing at affection, but he’s both emotionally and sexually frustrated.

He doesn’t have a good audience; Yuuma ignores him entirely, and Toru just stares blankly, face smooth with incomprehension. No appreciation for the romantic arts, these two.

About halfway through a discussion on whether or not Shamal should attempt at casual relationships so all his ex-girlfriends will stop trying to kill him, his phone goes off.

He answers it with a gruff noise of malcontent. “Who is this?”

There’s dead silence on the other end. Shamal almost thinks it’s a fake call, but then he hears halting, high-pitched breaking noises; the sound of someone trying to talk, but failing.

“Hello?” He asks, more patiently.

“ _It’s, me,_ ” a young man’s voice says. “ _It’s…I’m Gokudera._ ”

“Don’t know a Gokudera,” Shamal says, but he rises out of his seat as he recalls that he does.

A pause. _“Hhh…Hayato.”_

Hayato was a little spitfire with too much bite, and he grew up into a pretty decent hitman, in his own right. Shamal doesn’t like the fear in his voice. Old possessiveness rears its ugly head, despite Shamal refusing to have a protege and loathing the idea of having someone call him a teacher. But Hayato was suicidally reckless, and Shamal is both amazed and wary that the boy is even still alive. His hot-headed, all-or-nothing, self-sacrificial attitude should have gotten him killed thrice over, by now. The only person allowed to be that reckless is Reborn, two decades ago, getting pissed on shitty beer and having an existential crisis to fill up the time where normal people would be grieving.

“What are you calling for?” Shamal asks.

“ _There’s, uh,”_ Hayato’s voice wobbles. _“I’m…I don’t know what’s happened, he’s just…”_

“Why don’t you start with a little backstory, okay?”

“ _He got shot,”_ Hayato gasps. _“In the head.”_

“What, are you calling to report a dead body?”

“ _No, he came back. He got shot in the head with this magic shit. Gave him blue superpowers.”_ There’s the sound of rustling paper. _“Uh…It activated his, uh. Sage’s Aura?”_

Shamal’s glass freezes en route to his mouth.

“ _It fucked him up, it’s all melted into his skin, and, uh, he was fatigued after he showed up again,”_ Hayato barrels on, _“he was tired, and I wasn’t here tonight, but he’s fucked up.”_

“Is he expanding or retracting?” Shamal asks quickly, already standing up.

“ _What?”_

“Is he bloated or noodly? Any ink on his body? Words, pictures?”

“ _No, he’s— he’s bloated. It’s real bad.”_ Hayato’s voice is thin and rasping. “ _He’s…his body is all red, and it’s…fuck, feels like pudding. He’s bleeding out the nose, the eyes…_ ”

That’s unpleasant, but it’s not as if they could have caught it in time. Shit like this is why Reborn is the one who makes, uses, and cleans up after his absurd bullets, and no one else.

So it’s _very interesting_ that an old tag-along he hasn’t seen in years has a case of someone being hit by a dying will bullet while Reborn is busy grooming someone another person entirely.

Also, _melted into his head?_ Jesus. That would kill most people as it is.

“He has about a day to live. Tell me where you are.”

“ _I, uh—”_

“He has a _day to live_ , and I’m the only one who can treat Flame disorders. Tell me where you are before his organs start liquefying. That’s a symptom, you know.”

“ _I-I’m in Miyazawa, southeast of Namimori, big hotel, the CEDEF are here.”_

What the hell.

“What the _hell_?”

“ _It’s— mafia politics. Complicated. How fast can you get here?”_

“It’s close, for me, so about two hours.” Shamal is down the street now, power-walking back home. “I need you to keep him from turning into ooze. Is there a medkit in your suite?”

“ _Uh…”_ Rustling, shoving, long enough for Shamal to turn into the residential area. _“Yeah.”_

“I need you to get a needle and pump him full of stimulants. Adrenalin, ideally.”

“ _I don’t think it’s— oh. I think I got it. So do I just…”_

Shamal storms up to Federico’s home.

He forgot his coat, and if there’s a chance Reborn’s there, he forgot to have a conversation that’s been waiting for years.

 

* * *

 

Hayato stabs Yamamoto in the chest with the needle.

There’s no comforting automatic reaction, so he just moves onto the next thing; the mess.

The delicate tissue on the inside of Yamamoto’s nose has collapsed into a fountain of blood, pouring over his face and into a puddle under his head, a near-black blossom on the crisp white sheets. The eyes aren’t nearly as dire; the entire left half of the sclera in Yamamoto’s right eye turning dark red is really freaking Hayato out, though.

And that’s the worst part, Yamamoto’s eyes are open, unseeing, even though he’s clearly not awake. Hayato checks for pulse and breathing compulsively. Yamamoto’s meat doesn’t slide around on his bones, seeing as Yamamoto _isn’t dead,_ so there’s that. Yamamoto’s pulse is a fragile little flutter, and his breath is indistinguishable besides the faint puff of air against the back of Hayato’s hand.

He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.

Hayato quickly pulls Yamamoto from the bed and drags him into the bathroom, so he can be chucked into the bathtub, where his oozing can’t soil anything else.

He’s losing colour, which is good when you’re a big red meat balloon. Hayato wrings his hands and paces in and out of the bathroom, over and over, thinking _‘I should have known, I should have done something’_ even though he already told himself to stop it with that useless guilt shit. He _could_ have noticed Yamamoto was fucked over last night, but he didn’t, and now he’s got to fix it.

It’s been years since Hayato has last seen Shamal. He wonders if he and Bianchi still talk.

He hopes to god they don’t.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is written assuming Xanxus' listed age is how long he's been alive, not how old he actually was when he was frozen. It's also operating under the assumption that Shamal was Reborn's first 'student', though more in the sense they were together a lot and collaborated on problems, mostly each-other's. I have a fic about that.
> 
> So has anyone played Mermaid Swamp lmao


	27. The Recovery Of The Abandoned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one! Adding another scene would make it too unfocused and I liked how it ended.
> 
> Warnings are spoilery - you might not be able to figure what happened to Tsuna from just reading the chapter, but people who have experienced these things will probably understand right off the bat, so I'm warning for them anyway.
> 
>  **Warnings (real spoilers!):** Implied child abuse, implied child molestation, implied date rape, poor coping of said triggers

Federico once thought that there would never be a day where he truly hated a child.

Reborn clearly is trying his damnedest to prove him wrong.

Ever since he had showed up at Federico’s door out of nowhere telling him to be the Vongola’s tenth boss, he’s been making Federico’s life hell. Federico doesn’t want anything to do with him, and his flagrant disrespect for the safety of their youth. Even if he were to accept, Toru is only 16 — he has a few more years to go before he can take care of himself. Even longer, against _assassins_.

Toru is used to being with powerful people, and Federico just…isn’t that. No matter what kind of weapon Reborn puts in his hands.

And thanks to his spartan training…

“ _REBORN!_ Give me ten goddamn minutes, I’m injured, here!”

“You think the mafia is going to be nice to you just because you have a booboo?” Reborn asks, but Federico is pretty sure he’s taking the shit. He’s the one that broke Federico’s arm, after all.

“They can just deal with it, I’m not making my injury worse! Especially since that doctor won’t treat me…”

“I could call one in—”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Federico points the scraper spatula at Reborn with a furious jab. “You’ve done enough! You don’t need to drag anyone else into your schemes, you damn fake!”

“Is this because you don’t want to be Decimo?” Reborn ponders. “Even though the only option is…”

Federico grits his teeth. “…I’m not going to give a fourteen-year-old a mafia organization.”

Reborn smirks. “You have such a vested code of honour.”

“I have a _brother._ ”

The kitchen goes silent as Reborn visibly turns the statement around in his head. Federico empties the rest of the batter onto the frying pan and starts making another batch. It’s hard to do one-handed, admittedly, but he’s doing okay with his teeth and his elbow. Sure would be better of _somebody_ would _help him_.

“I wasn’t aware you still thought of him as your brother.”

“Xanxus was the favourite. Family included.” He scoops flour into the bowl with sharp, pointed movements. “He was Enrico, but better. We loved him.”

“I found them to have similar attitudes.”

“Enrico was arrogant. Xanxus was prideful. In ways that kept him safe.” Federico stops in his irritated pancake-making to turn around and look at Reborn, leaning against the counter. “He was a pest, but he was a _child_. And he was doing so well until they let him take over the Varia.”

“He was capable.”

“He was a _teenager_!”Federico hisses. “Who lets an entitled 16-year-old boy run an _assassination squad?_ I don’t know what dad did to set him off, but I don’t know why _anyone_ was surprised his first was response was to _kill the problem_. You don’t give kids that kind of responsibility, and _they had it coming._ I don’t want to go back to a place where _no one_ is willing to admit that!”

Reborn looks uncharacteristically serious. When the silence starts to grate, he tips his hat. “You’re worried Toru will end up similarly.”

“If it’s only until he’s…twenty, maybe.” Federico scratches the corner of his ear. “You can wax poetic about how different the mafia is, but it’s interwoven with the Blackmarket. You know that. If you bring someone like Toru back in…”

“I understand. As a Decimo, it’s a responsible condition. I’d worry about how you’re dealing with Lambo, but.”

“Yuuma is teaching him to be less terrible all the time. I have no experience with projectiles, so…” Federico’s lips quirk.

“How boss-like.” Reborn puts his hands in his pockets and smirks fully, now. “You’re really shaping up, aren’t you? Federico.”

“That’s not really a good thing—”

Reborn suddenly and without warning leaps from the table and drop kicks Federico in the head, dunking his hair in the bowl of pancake batter he just started stirring.

“R-RE—”

“If you’re willing to be Decimo, you should be willing to keep up with your training. Drop and give me twenty before you need to flip that pancake.”

“ _REBOOOOOORN!_ ”

  
  


* * *

 

 

Kyouko shows up at Tetsuya’s place surprisingly early, perky and already in her exercising clothes. It’s a kind of diligence Tetsuya almost forgot young teens could have.

“You should probably work with weapons. I’m worried about your safety.” At her pinched expression, Tetsuya lets out a light chuckle. “Not to fight. To deflect attacks. Anything in mind?”

She scratches her head. “…I…attacked Hibari-san with a broom, once.”

“That was very foolish,” he tells her earnestly.

She at least has the self-awareness to look sheepish.

Breakfast is being made when he invites her in. Tetsuya’s mother bustles in and squeals when he sees Kyouko. “Oh, would you look at that! Are you taking in another little duckling?”

Tetsuya’s nose wrinkles at calling _Kyouya_ a _duckling_. “No, she’s from my school. I’m helping her with a few things.”

“Oh, like a tutor? Well, that’s wonderful. Would you like breakfast, dear?”

“I don’t want to impose,” Kyouko hedges.

“Nonsense! These boys eat like hogs, one more isn’t going to do anything. If you’re exercising, you need the extra calories. Don’t want to burn out after five minutes!” Tetsuya’s mom goes back into the kitchen to tend to the frying pan full of potatoes. “When Tetsuya was your age, he ate _mountains_. That little boy kept him running for hours.”

“Little…” Kyouko gives Tetsuya a once-over and her smile turns speculative. “…You mean, Hibari-senpai?”

“Of course. We’ve known him since he was this tall,” Tetsuya’s mom laughs, holding a hand at her thigh. “Babysitting him is a family business.”

“My dad,” Tetsuya says in a rush, and then clears his throat and continues more smoothly, “My dad was hired, and once he couldn’t deal with him anymore, let me take over. Kyouya-san was… _hard to handle_ as a child.”

“I bet he was,” Kyouko laughs.

He had all but proven his probably-illegal status as Eternal Senpai, but if Kyouko is bothered by an adult attending a middle-school, she doesn’t show it. He suspects there’s very little reason to; Tetsuya doesn’t attend class at all, and Kyouya makes the Disciplinary Committee record the classroom lessons so he can do them later, in private. Being forced to stay still in a room full of people is emotionally taxing for him, and Kyouya had thoroughly given up even trying to deal with it after two days.

Tetsuya’s mom finishes breakfast soon, and they all eat together. His dad is still half-asleep and greets Kyouko formally; Tetsuya thinks that maybe he thinks Kyouko is a member of the Disciplinary Committee. It wouldn’t be a stretch; she’s already opted to help them out for a while.

Kyouko is perfectly polite, with impeccable table manners, so proper that even his unpleasable father is impressed. Kusakabe Hiraku has spent years trying to instill similar manners in Tetsuya and Kyouya, and both cases were…less than successful. Tetsuya cracked under the pressure and ran screaming into the Rebellious Phase, and Kyouya was insulted by the pressure and refused to listen on principle until a Visit shut him up.

Tetsuya’s palms prickle at the memory, and he adjusts his fingers slowly, fighting down a full-body shiver.

Kyouya had changed so viscerally after that Visit. He wonders what will change this time. Years of getting him to act appropriately, and now…

Kyouko places a firm hand on Tetsuya’s shoulder, shaking him out of his reverie. There’s concern written over her face. He smiles weakly and finishes off his plate. Having a psychic reading every ounce of fear and concern stored in your body is just another layer of pressure.

When they’re done, they go out to the backyard. Tetsuya hands Kyouko his old staff, and takes out his retractable model.

“That’s the same model as Hibari-senpai’s,” she notes, looking it over. “You had them made at the same time.”

“There’s a freelance weapon specialist in Namimori. She constructs people’s blueprints as a hobby,” Tetsuya explains. “These models were made by another local hobbyist. Probably someone who saw Kyouya-san’s tonfas break.”

“Weren’t Hibari-senpai’s tonfas always metal?”

Tetsuya gives her a Look.

She starts to sweat.

“Let’s work on posture, first.” Tetsuya starts guiding her body into the appropriate form. “After that is kata repetition.”

“Repetition?”

“When you aren’t used to something, you have to think about what you’re about to do before you do it. But if your body _is_ used to it, you can do it automatically, and thus much faster. Like learning to write. After enough training, you’ll have your own ‘handwriting’.”

“Handwriting…” Kyouko murmurs. She slides into the perfect position before Tetsuya can adjust the rest of her. “That sounds simple enough.”

“…Good.” He frowns. “…Next form.”

She again takes on the perfect form the moment he adjusts her arms.

Training a psychic is really, _really_ easy, apparently.

“…Well, I suppose I can work you through your first kata after school. Next form…”

 

* * *

 

Everything, Tsuna realizes, is too bright, too vivid, and giving him a headache.

He had been fixating so hard on the milling figures below that he hadn’t really registered it, but now that Hayato is gone and hasn’t come back and he feels like maybe it’d be a bad idea to run away after all (and even if he tried, Hayato isn’t here to help him right now), he’s lost his focus and now all he knows is too much light, too many details.

He doesn’t feel nauseous anymore, so he goes back into the kitchen to make himself something to eat. All he finds is a loaf of bread, some produce, and every condiment known to man. Everything in the cupboards needs to be cooked, and when Tsuna cooks, an Apocalypse rises from the dish, so he just makes himself a sandwich, tugs Hayato’s blanket off his bed, and goes to sit on the balcony in a cocoon, nibbling on his negligible meal.

After a good twenty minutes, he hears shuffling from the roof. He looks up to see Hayato, looking pallid and a little too jumpy.

“Boss,” he says haltingly, and clears his throat. “…Kurokawa ditched. Yamamoto’s still got his fever, so I want to make sure he doesn’t get too sick. I already asked for a doctor, but…”

“Oh,” says Tsuna.

Hayato looks at him with a sense of urgency, but it still takes Tsuna a few seconds to comprehend what he wants.

Right. He’s the boss.

“Watch over…make sure he’s okay,” Tsuna waves.

“About Kurokawa…”

Tsuna blinks, replaying the conversation in his head.

Ditched.

How the _hell_ did she get out of the hotel room without being caught?

He immediately goes back to analyzing escape routes, this time recording ways to get off the balcony instead of ways to get out from the ground floor. There’s only balconies for the top five floors. She must have dropped down and entered the building through one of the suites. An occupied one, if the screen door was unlocked. Now that the place is flooded with mafia and students, finding one of those is pretty simple. Or maybe she got stuck there, and got caught, or stranded.

“Boss?”

Tsuna blinks. “She probably couldn’t get back upstairs after coming down. Forget about it.”

“…If you say so. I’m going to…” Hayato turns to leave, but hesitates. “Are you sure you’re okay? You want me to bring something over for you? Pillows? Extra blankets?”

“I’m fine,” Tsuna says. “Go ahead.”

Hayato still hesitates, but eventually, he leaves.

Tsuna closes his eyes, buries his fingers in his hair, and hides in his cocoon, tucked in the corner of the railing.

Everything is too bright.

 

* * *

 

The remote-dial works best when Shouichi is using it, and Shouichi doesn’t want to give up his rings, so Hana just cranks it and hopes for the best. It’s an endless cycle of cranking and pressing the button and giving Shouichi meaningful looks, until suddenly, a lance of florescent green snakes up Hana’s arm.

“ _Omigod_ ,” Hana gasps. “It works! It’s working!”

“So you have a different aspect too. Let me see…” Shouichi presses the button, and the series of boxes that appear spit glitter so ferociously Hana is worried it might be sparks ready to light the carpet on fire or something.

“So I am a…Sun, it was called? A Sun.” He wiggles his fingers and releases the button. Hana waits all of five seconds before she snatches it back and cranks it again, but he doesn’t complain. “I guess we’ll just call that one Lightning, if we’re sticking to the weather motifs.”

“Easy to remember,” Hana agrees. That makes seven different aspects! So she has magic powers, now, sort of. Maybe she should try controlling them? It seems like everyone else can do it, and hell if she’ll lose to a bunch of delinquents and criminals.

She focuses on the concept of energy flowing into her hand, since that’s how manga characters do it. Then she clears her head, and tries to project Intent.

She cracks open one eye. It looks the same. Shouichi is busy scribbling into his notebook.

Hana pouts. Okay…what else instills magic powers?

Well, there’s always the Shounen stuff, where everyone is like, power of friendship and whatever. She concentrates on the energy thing, and tries to think about worrying about Kyouko, and then worrying about Kyouko’s flagrant enabling, and then worrying about Tsuna, and then…

And then wishing she was strong enough to burst out of that closet and help him, to fight to the death to keep her promise, and how much that regret _stings_.

The licking tongues of electricity peels away from her arm, and dozens of bolts go _flying_ around the room, making Hana scream and Shouichi duck. She falls backward and drops the dial, and they abruptly vanish.

Hana hisses when her arm scrapes the carpet; there’s an irritated red Lichtenburg figure all along the skin of her arm. She cradles it and looks around.

Several spots on the the wall are charred, and the bed is smoking.

“Shit!” Hana hisses. She races to the sink, fills a cup, and tosses it onto the bed. It dampens the smoke, but probably not enough. She grabs the screwdriver, stands on the bed, and hits the smoke detector so hard it shatters in an explosion of plastic shards. She pries out the batteries, and they plop pathetically to the ground.

Hana pauses to catch her breath. It stinks like burnt everything in here.

“Maybe,” Shouichi says quietly. “We can try never, ever doing whatever you just did again.”

“Okay,” Hana says. “Yeah. Okay. Sounds good.”

Then she collapses, the all-nighter finally catching up to her.

 

* * *

 

Shamal finds Reborn, but doesn’t really have the time to interrogate him, since Reborn is busy harassing Federico. He grabs his coat and roots through their closet for his spare medkit — he comes over pretty often to flirt with The Only Hot Woman around here, and it was too much trouble to lug his things along every time.

Reborn looks mildly interested in Shamal’s bustling. “Going somewhere?”

“I’m always on call,” Shamal says with false bravado.

“Isn’t your job at Toru’s school enough?”

“I called in sick.” Shamal opens his mouth to continue, but closes it and decides he would rather deal with the complexity of adult responsibilities than play headgames with Reborn. Even if there weren’t goddamn _dying will bullets_ involved, if Hayato is worried enough about this person to beg for help, there’s no way he isn’t important enough to make Hayato throw his life away trying to avenge. The kid is a fucking dumbass.

“Who’s so important that you feel the need to skive off work?” Reborn asks, ever-needling.

“Old friend,” Shamal mutters. “You’ve got plenty of those.”

“Anyone I know?”

Shamal stares at the toddler-sized old man, closes his eyes, and feels his patience evaporate like steam in a tundra.

“FEDERICO! I HAVE TO GO SAVE A CHILD’S LIFE!” Shamal yells.

Federico stumbles into the hall. There’s pancake batter matting his black hair. They had breakfast an hour ago. Shamal really doesn’t want to know what goes on in this house. “Oh my god, what? Where?”

“Out of town. They have a day to live. I’m the only one who can save them.”

Reborn narrows his eyes, clearly irritated that Shamal out-played him.

“What are you doing, go! Right now!” Federico pauses, and takes on his Stern Boss Look, which is more like a Stern Yet Concerned Father Look. He’s trying, at least. “And don’t you dare charge them.”

“Saving lives is payment enough,” Shamal says with starry-eyed earnestness. He drops the act to give Reborn one last scathing look. “And we need to talk when I get back.”

Reborn doesn’t respond, but the gravity is clear in his face.

Shamal turns on his heel with a white-knuckled grip on his medical case and leaves.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna wakes up feeling significantly more well-rested, and also way too hot.

He emerges from his blanket cocoon and yawns. He’s coated in a thin layer of sweat, baked in the sun like a wrapped potato, and the back of his throat is dry. He decides to remedy both with another round in the shower.

He does feel better, even though the bright-vivid world hasn’t gone away. He wipes his eyes groggily and checks the clock — he’s been asleep for two hours. School has well since started, and if Hibari hadn’t noticed his absence before, he sure as hell notices it now. He wonders if Kyouko is really going to be okay. He wonders if anyone texted her yet.

His Device is in his bag, though, so _he_ can’t do it. Maybe.

Tsuna runs the shower lukewarm, and gives it a burst of cold water to keep from overheating. Then he changes for the third time, and gets a glass of water. He’s feeling more stable than ever, but still not very good. Hollow, maybe. He kind of always feels hollow, but in a good, not-particularly-caring sort of way.

Now everything is cast in sharp contrasts and he’s emotional and feeling hollow feels like the sight of a black, bottomless chasm just before you tumble in.

Tsuna rubs his eyes again and slicks his damp hair back. It’s already drying after a squeeze and a rough toweling, way faster than it used to back when his hair was a knotted, greasy mess and took six hours to lose its water content. This strikes Tsuna as kind of weird, but whatever.

He feels a little too anxious to sit around watching TV, so he goes back on the balcony again, where he can see everything that’s happening. Huge piles of garbage have been cleared out by T-shirt-wearing mafioso (?). The streets are populated again, with people who look like citizens helping refill the bins of garbage. Most of the people who were running around the front of the hotel are gone, now.

He begins unconsciously tracing paths out with his mind’s eye again. He finds a lot of them. They probably don’t care about any students leaving.

A pressure starts mounting at the back of his mind.

He feels suddenly wracked with anxiety and urgency, and he clutches the railing, leaning over, feeling drawn to the balcony below him. And the one below that.

But Hayato is going to come back, so he shouldn’t.

He slowly leans back until he’s standing straight and sucks in ocean-fresh air. Nothing feels right anymore. He feels like his mind has been torn open and left to bleed all over the rest of him. His grip on the railing tightens and his breath comes in shaky.

And then he sees someone approach the hotel.

He can’t see the person’s features, or understand what the person is saying from this high up. But he sees the blond hair, and he hears a familiar cadence, and that’s all he really needs.

When Tsuna was six years old, he found out his father was in the mafia.

He didn’t think much of it, because he was six, but when he was lonely and confused he would try to look up mafia things to understand where his father had gone, searched and searched until he found cover companies and spare Italian words and a tenuous grip on his parent’s machinations. When he talked to his mom about it, she told him he escaped a life of crime for her sake.

And back when he was small and felt all the time he thought it was romantic too, the mystery and hope of saying ‘he became a star’, the joy when he came back whole and passed out in the sitting room with Tsuna cradled in his big, strong arms, hardy from either heavy construction or a life living outside of the law.

**I can fix this.**

And then he left, for the mafia, he left Tsuna all alone, every time, sometimes not even bothering to say goodbye, and didn’t even have the decency to check in, because if he did do that he would have _known_. He would have _known_ _what happened_.

**I can fix this.**

Tsuna didn’t recognize Yamazaki Kunihiro at first, but now it’s unforgettable, the cold twist of resentment and mental decay that covered him like a shroud, hovering on the edge of the festival path hidden in night-time shadows, just some teenager he couldn’t remember the name of that seemed to think of Tsuna’s family as one big _joke_ , and Tsuna thinks maybe he _knew_.

**I can fix this.**

Maybe he knew what kind of shit Tsuna was going through and felt just as angry and disgusted with Tsuna’s father as Tsuna feels now, or maybe he just knew Tsuna’s dad was rotten from the get-go, maybe he knew he was still a criminal and didn’t just lie, he ran off and never came back for _years_. He left Tsuna _alone_. He had this much power and _he let this happen_.

Tsuna’s breath comes in quick and he shoves the palms of his hands against his eyes.

“ _ **I can fix this,”** the man with the cherry hair breathed, clutching Tsuna’s shoulders. Tsuna’s vision swam._

“ _How?” The woman asked._

“… _I can seal it away. I can…I can make it so he’ll never remember any of it.” A hand along his hair. “You want to forget all this ever happened, right? You don’t want to feel scared anymore?”_

_Tsuna agreed._

But he _didn’t forget_.

He didn’t feel scared anymore, but he remembered _everything_ , everything except waking up to two people in the apartment. He still visited the next day, and only felt confusion when he found out nobody lived there anymore.

And Tsuna just thought that meant there was nothing to be anxious anymore, he didn’t have to feel obligated to visit anymore, and he could go on with his life. But the hands on his back still felt too intimate and the taste of jasmine tea felt like he was about to lose control at any moment and now ‘reminds me of how unpleasant it used to be’ is suddenly a raw, screaming terror of things that aren’t coming.

And _he let this happen_.

He made Tsuna feel this lonely so he can be a criminal and he lied and somehow _he let someone—_ and somehow a family member who had to _find him by accident_ had to take care of things, and he had his mind smothered so _badly_ that letting it consume him means _stabbing a man in the head_ until he was _mush_ and maybe it was that stranger’s fault for fucking up so badly, but he never would have had the opportunity to fuck up if Sawada Iemitsu had ever bothered to _stick around_ and _not do crimes_.

And it’s broken.

Whatever was done to him, it’s not around anymore, the eternal smoothness over his mind has cracks and fissures and now _panic attacks_ and _murders_ are leaking out. There was a long, jagged slash along his arm that isn’t there anymore, not even a scar or irritated skin, and when he clutches his chest, there’s no response from his supposedly broken rib. He checked in the mirror — he doesn’t have a black eye anymore.

Something is wrong.

His breathing stutters. Something is wrong and sooner or later they’re going to ask, and they’re going to treat him differently, it’s not going to be _boss_ or _sloth creep_ or _Tsuna_ it’s going to be _are you okay_ and _you sure you want to do this_ and _are you sure you’re in the right state to do anything_ , because the truth will be so shocking that they just won’t _get it_. It’s just going to be an unfathomable horror story and Tsuna will have to watch them look for suffering at every living, breathing moment, and while that’ll be plenty useful while he’s bent over a toilet and desperately scared, he doesn’t know how he’s going to deal when every passing second of his day-to-day life is set against someone trying to see if he’s suitably _submerged in horror_ at his _horrifying, horrible horror story_ , and somehow even though he has no realistic idea how they’ll _actually_ react, he still feels illogically _pissed off_.

There’s some magic black shit inside him making him kill people and he can’t bring it up without saying _‘oh, pretty sure I got it when a distant probably-uncle-maybe-cousin tried to make me forget I got—’_

His thoughts clamp down on the word like a bitten tongue.

…He wandered off with a stranger because he wanted his dad around and someone noticed.

Tsuna suddenly _hates_ his dad, and he _hates_ his friends, he _hates_ Yamazaki and the man with the cherry hair and orange eyes, and he thinks if he has to see Hayato look concerned at him and ask him what’s wrong, he’s going to fling himself off this balcony right now.

His dad enters the building.

Tsuna’s brain shuts off.

Everything happens in a tidy, poorly-remembered series events. On the roof. To another balcony. Drop, drop, dropping to the bottom. Going from a locked door to an opened one, and smearing the hand lotion on the table over his hair, keeping it from fluffing back into place.

Heading down the empty hallway with cold, furious focus, every second a potential moment to get caught. Down the stairs, into the lobby, looking to find the entrance to the first floor suites, but seeing a pile of bags instead. He sees his bag poking out from under a suitcase and hauls it out. There are dozens of kids down here, all grabbing their own luggage, and he follows them back into the suites. The few men still in suites barely look at him.

Tsuna finds Uenohara Suzu — the girl he had collected trash with and the closest thing to a Koyama Middle School authority after Miki — and follows her into her room. She welcomes him in when she sees who’s following her.

The relief at walking through all that without being caught gives him a burst of belated adrenalin, and he clutches his beating heart as his mind slides back into focus. He almost runs his fingers through his hair before remembering he had slicked it back. The whole escape was depending pretty hard on mixed information — a boy with wild, unkempt black hair, a broken rib, and a series of bruises is a little different than a boy with sleek, slicked-black hair who’s perfectly healthy.

The healing factor is seriously cool, though. He wonders if he can activate it without having to murder someone. The guy _was_ trying to kill him.

But anyway, that might not work when they find out he’s missing and are actually checking kid’s faces.

“You have any foundation? Concealer?” He asks Uenohara, who’s makeup looks impeccable and fairly thick.

“Where’s the President?” She asks. Or whispers. Her voice is breathy and has a whine of tension to it, and Tsuna gets the feeling that if she spoke, it would sound like tumbling gravel. Throat damage _and_ asthma.

“He’s in the penthouse. A friend of mine has a high fever. I think everyone got out okay.”

Uenohara nods slowly, relaxing. “They said they ‘ll leave by tomorrow.”

“Okay,” says Tsuna.

Uenohara gives him her makeup bag. Tsuna doesn’t know how to apply makeup — any time he’s worn it, Kyouko applied it — so he just smudges the foundation haphazardly over his face and rubs dark eyeshadow roughly over his lids. A cursory look in the mirror tells him it’s changed the contours of his face, and he looks nothing like he usually does in pictures.

Tsuna starts stripping. Uenohara slowly turns around with her eyes squeezed shut.

He puts on a grey shirt and jeans, like most of the men outside. His has neon green lining, because he likes bright colours and is reckless in a thrift shop, but hopefully it’ll work.

“Where are you going?” She asks as he starts pulling on his shoes.

“Home,” he says, then pauses, remembers Hibari and the hair dye and the impromptu vacation, and quickly amends with “Hakuyou.” He wants to yell at someone right now, and he’s pretty sure ‘guy who made him a smoke-pumping murder machine’ is a _great_ target. He’ll go home tonight so he can hug his mom and cry only a little bit so she’ll feed him steak and believe him when he says he’ll get over it eventually.

“Should I tell…?”

“No. Absolutely not. This is a secret. Don’t even give them a suggestion of where I might have went.” Tsuna is good enough at escaping that he can do it from the rooftop, given the appropriate incentive, so his dad coming him isn’t as big of a deal as Hibari trying to kill him for shirking his secretarial duties.

“What happened?”

Tsuna looks at her. She seems to be glowing with interest, but not the gleeful kind. Like it’s _important_. Like it’s a _responsibility_ to know.

“If you really want to mess with them, ask them about magic powers,” Tsuna says after a moment. He tries to remember everything Hayato told them about what happened. “Tell them that a child with blue vines had magic powers...and you’ll give them more info if they tell you what’s really happening.”

“I don’t have…info.”

“They don’t know that,” Tsuna says, pulling out his knuckledusters, Device, and a wad of cash from the bag’s lining.

Uenohara makes a speculative noise and lets Tsuna shove the bag into her hands.

“Thank you,” Tsuna says, and he finds that he really, honestly feels it. Uenohara is a stranger, and normally it’d threaten him, but she cares about him enough to help him like this, even if it’s only because he’s Hayato’s boss.

She pulls her medical mask down to show cracked lips and a row of teeth rounded into jagged points like a lion’s maw.

“’Welcome,” she says, in a grating rumble instead of a whisper.

Tsuna jumps out the window.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers: oh, this is Timoteo's curse, right, that's what's happening here  
> Me, swilling wine, smirking: Soon, You Will Realize
> 
> Timoteo's flame sealing is profoundly boring and anime-only, and while I COULD make it interesting narrative on Tsuna's trust issues and how he views the mafia, I could also make an infinitely more complex and dynamic interwoven narrative involving the local yakuza, their relationship with Iemitsu&Nana, Tsuna's trust issues, how Tsuna copes with trauma, a more realistic reason for why getting sealed would mess him up so badly, and giving Tsuna cool and unique superpowers that don't feel arbitrary. You see, it's not about your easily available options, it's how hard you try to avoid them at every turn!
> 
> Also, because I'm the train that just keeps chugging, I want to eventually cover as many methods of abuse and reactions to said abuse as I can; abuse narratives in any media tend to be…completely horrible and exploitative? lol


	28. The Recovery Of Order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [puts 99% of the myth arc in the last 10 chapters of the fic] haha whats good  
>    
>  **Warnings:** Descriptions of child sexual abuse (non-explicit), character struggling with sexual and murder-y trauma, broken bones, extensive discussion of CSA in author's notes below

Gi U wakes with a desperate gasp. The air tastes like stale plastic, and he claws at the mask strapped over his mouth purely on instinct.

“I wouldn’t do that,” a familiar voice says, “unless you want to drown.”

Gi U pauses, and slowly opens his eyes. The blue-tinted water stings at his eyes and makes his vision blurry. There’s a shade beyond the glass of his container, but he doesn’t need to see them to know who it is. Shame burns at his cheeks and makes his throat ache.

His arms are filled with needles, but are intact — the roses are still there, but they aren’t casting wires along his muscles, and most of the ropes are sinking back into his flesh. It’s still raw, though, and it itches, and his stomach hurts from all his organs resettling.

“I suppose it would too much to ask if Zeni had actually committed any _crimes we could have arrested him for_.”

Gi U looks away from the shade and starts clawing nervously at the lid of the tank. The figure sighs.

“Let him out.”

The lid lifts, and Gi U flies out, bouncing from the lip of the container to the nearest bookcase, scrambling until he can get to the corner of the room. He’s in the stuffy old study where he’s never allowed to go anywhere and no one listens to him. The familiarity makes him sink into himself but he still glares at his bandaged captors.

The smaller of the two, barely infant-sized, looks at him without eyes. “You’ve been nothing but a disobedient pest since we’ve found you. You had only _one thing_ to do.”

“I don’t want to find your stupid squares!” Gi U cries. “I don’t wanna find them! They’re horrible! _I hate them!_ They let me fail!”

“They were experiments too, they couldn’t exactly _let_ you do any—” He makes a discontented noise at how Gi U shrinks away with a snarl. “Don’t you want to help us?”

“No. I hate you.” He sticks his tongue out.

The toddler-shaped jailer manages to communicate bored resignation without a face. “Did your little _partner in crime_ have anything new to say about Green Door, at least?”

“I know how it works,” Gi U mumbles. “But it’s only like how you already said. And he lied! He said they _knew_ who I was a part of! He said that they had it in Miyazawa but they _didn’t!”_

“Will you calm—”

Gi U wipes a fat stream of tears with one bony wrist. “I’m not anything! I’m a fake thing! You know I am, _I’m a fake person!”_

“Oh _yes_ , and I suppose the entire point of artificial insemination is simply a matter of creating fake people too. Get down from there, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

“I don’t have any self to embarrass! _I’m not real!”_

The two men look at each other, and the babyish leader of the two pats his companion’s tightly bandaged face. “Lock him up.”

Gi U unwinds immediately. “NO!”

“Then pull yourself together.”

Gi U’s lip wobbles. Slowly, he stretches out a narrow leg and climbs down off the bookcase. He pads over to the two, head lowered so his tangle of black hair falls over his face.

“If you want to _ever_ leave this place again, I’d like you to _listen_.” The toddler walks down the length of his companion’s arm until he’s at what counts for eye level with the boy. He places his hand along his cheek and mops the newest stream of tears. The gesture makes Gi U’s fever-bright violet eyes flick up. The jailer’s hand slides down the boy’s throat until it stops at the thin black rectangle dangling from his neck, glowing weakly in the presence of the vibrant, hot grey-black smoke swirling in the clear pacifier around his own neck.

“You only need to let us know who and where they are. We only want to _help_ you.”

Gi U’s eyes slide down, brimming with even more tears.

“You don’t want the Green Door Project to happen _again,_ do you?”

The boy sniffles, and wipes his face.

“…No, Bermuda.”

“Good.” Bermuda stands up straight. “Because I have somewhere I want you to go.”

 

* * *

 

Iemitsu sucks in a deep breath through his nose and exhales through his mouth.

He’s going to have to confront his son.

He’s not sure how confronting your own children works. In a business arrangement, it’s easy; there are clearly established rules, and if you break them, you worsen your sustainability in the business. But with a kid, the rules are unclear clear, easy to bend, and if they’re broken, it’s more of an impact on their entire character than some factor of their relationship.

He sighs and rubs his hands over his face.

He doesn’t know enough about his son to even get a good grip on how he should treat him. Oh, there’s always Hyper Intuition, but that works best when he has the texture of his living situation to supplement it, which he doesn’t in this case, because he is at least 80% sure Hayato is lying to him.

And now, horror of horrors, he has to talk his son through a post-kill therapy session _and_ the truth about Dying Will Flames.

This hasn’t been a great week.

He stops at the doors and looks the two guards over. “Which…?”

They look at each other with furrowed brows. Iemitsu shakes his head. “Nevermind. Just…start with the left one.”

The left-hand guard knocks on his door. There’s the sound of shuffling, cussing, and something breaking, followed by rapid footsteps. The door swings open to the pale, frantic face of Gokudera Hayato.

“Where’s my son?” Iemitsu asks.

Hayato freezes, eyes dancing between the door across from him, Iemitsu’s face, and whatever’s behind him. “In that one,” he finally says, pointing across the hallway. “He was rooming with Kurokawa.”

Iemitsu nods to the other guard, who knocks on the door. There’s no answer.

“Maybe knock louder,” Hayato says with some truly impudent eyebrow quirking.

The guard knocks again, even louder. Still no response.

“Move,” Iemitsu orders. He uses the master key to open the lock and marches into the apartment. “Tsuna?”

No answer.

Iemitsu doesn’t like this.

He takes out his gun and does a sweep. Not in the sitting area, kitchen, dining area. Bathroom is empty — the shower was used recently, and a pile of clothes sits on the floor. He nudges them with his foot, revealing the subtle, almost-dried sweatstains around the pits.

The guards hover around the entryway, and he gestures them in as he stops at the edge of the bedroom and peeks inside. He doesn’t see anyone. The blanket of one of the beds is missing. The second bed is rumpled, and when Iemitsu runs his hand over it, it feels slightly cool with dampness.

He knows what’s happening even as he finishes the sweep at the balcony, where there’s nothing left but the blanket off the bed, coated in crumbs.

They’re gone.

Iemitsu turns on his radio. “Sawada. I need a helicopter sweep for a teen Japanese male, possibly wearing hotel clothing, medium-length brown—” he pauses, recalls the sight of his son entering the hotel, and the shade of his hair “—Black hair, brown eyes” and the guard frowns, like that’s not quite right, and it’s with deep hesitation Iemitsu corrects himself with “—just…dark eyes. Should be injured.” He glances at the guard. “Status?”

“There’s a bruise that’s almost healed,” the guard says, gesturing under his left eye, “and he had a lot of bruises along his arms and stuff.”

“Right. Broken rib, slight bruises all over his body, bruised eye. Report all sightings and return unharmed, over.”

He’s barely out of the apartment before his feed crackles to life. _“Reported sighting of several young black-haired Japanese males with that approximate description in the lobby, over.”_

Iemitsu pinches the bridge of his nose. _Japan_. “He’ll be significantly shorter than average. I’ll post an image.”

“What’s going on?” Hayato asks, looking between the three men searchingly. “Where’s the Boss?”

“And we’re going to have _talks_ about this Boss business,” Iemitsu snaps. “They aren’t in there. Do you have any idea where they could have gone?”

“Uh. Home. We were all really tired, and Kurokawa is an impatient diabolical temptress. She probably decided to go with him when he said he wanted to leave.” He pauses, and continues with, “heck, they probably left as soon as they closed the doors.”

“ _Unbelievable._ And I suppose you’re just happy sitting around, waiting for someone to tell you what to do?”

Hayato looks suspicious. After a second, he confirms Iemitsu’s instincts when he sheepishly admits “I was about to ditch too. I just didn’t want to leave Tsuna alone.”

“Here’s my advice; _don’t_.” Iemitsu reaches into the apartment and pulls the handle hard enough that Hayato barely has enough time to jump back inside. It slams, which isn’t really satisfying enough to make Iemitsu feel better.

He sucks in a deep breath of air through his nose. Then he turns on his earwig again. “Sawada. Addendum to previous report; possible accomplice in Kurokawa Hana. Teen Japanese female, wavy back hair, black eyes. Report all sightings, return alive, over.”

This has _not_ been a great week.

 

* * *

 

“Ugh, why don’t I get a weapon,” Hana whines, flopping over her bed. “I wish the staff wasn’t so big, I would have took it with me.”

Shouichi makes a distracted noise at the back of his throat. He’s still taking notes or whatever. “The staff was a Rain thing. You said so.”

“Blech.” Hana rolls until she falls to the floor and starts digging through her bag. “I wish I brought the gun down, we haven’t tested it yet. Miura-san’s going to lose it if she finds out we got in a fight and didn’t touch it.”

“You didn’t _have_ it for most of that. And even if you did, they had real guns!”

“I knoooow.” Hana starts assembling her sniper rifle, mostly out of boredom. “Is this your model?”

Shouichi glances down. “No, someone in Sicily designed that.”

“What do you usually design?”

“Anything to do with pellets. I’ve only made two guns for her, actually. I mean, there was this gun that let you store and fire bullets coated in liquid substances, and a gun that fires thumbtacks.”

“Oh, ew.”

“She uses it for her corkboard.” Shouichi taps his chin with his pen. “What’s a good word for beauty, but like, in a ‘miracle of nature’ way? I’m thinking of _la meraviglia_ , but this is in Japanese, so it just sounds dumb.”

“Kowaku, maybe? What are you writing?” Hana peeks at the paper in his hands from the edge of the bed. He’s using letter paper. She gasps. “Is this for Umiiiiiii?”

Shouichi goes beet red, and crawls away from her. “No! Maybe! None of your business!”

“Are you going to tell her she can trust you now that you invented a magic fire lazer? Are you proposing to her!” Hana squeals.

“Sh-Shut up! I’m just…” He holds the paper to his face and glances away. “…I don’t like that she’s involved in this sort of thing. I want her to know I can be trusted…but I need to know more if she wants my help.”

“Like what’s up with the rings, huhh.” Hana folds her arms and rests her head on them. “What are her letters like?”

“U-Uhm…” He reaches behind him to rummage through his bag, and shakes an envelope out. Hana screams again and snatches it right out of his hand.

“What is this!”

“It’s the first letter she ever sent. I keep it with me…sort of like a good luck charm,” he grumbles.

“Omigod that is _soooo cuuuute_.” She opens the envelope and carefully smooths out the letter.

_To new penpal,_

_Hello. I am a person your age in Italy. My pen name is ‘Perla Del Mare’. That means ‘Umi no Shinju’ in your language. My real name is a secret because I’m not allowed to send letters._

_I don’t have many people to talk to, so I am sending a letter to someone my age so I can know what it’s like in other places. I chose Japan because it is very far away and people will notice less if all my letters go to a place like Japan. I know Italian, Japanese, English, and French. If you want me to write something in other languages I can do that. I like Japanese the best because it’s very pretty._

_My hobbies are music and reading and I have very many brothers. My dreams for the future are to see the ocean, that’s why I chose that pen name. My family gets sick easily and many of my brothers have died already so I have to live in my house forever. Please send photographs with your response because I don’t have any photographs with colours in my books._

_-Ocean Pearl_

  
  


“Aww, it’s so awkward, this is the cutest thing _everrrr._ You said you’re worried about her being in danger?”

“She keeps talking about things she’s now allowed to do,” Shouichi explains. “She’s only eleven, so I guess she doesn’t get it, but there’s a bunch of scary stuff she mentions, and her ‘friends’ that live around Europe are all…well, here’s one.”

He gives her another letter. This one’s just a photocopy.

“Do you reread these every night?” Hana giggles.

“Shut _up.”_

_To Shou-kun,_

_Hello. Your music was very beautiful! You are so talented. Please send more. I think you are very skilled with the guitar. I like track 2 the best. I am sure you will be able to be a very famous musician._

_Are your other rings okay? There is supposed to be one missing. It is violet and it goes to someone else just so no one can have all of them at the same time! Don’t worry. If you see someone with that ring he is a friend. If he tries to hurt you show him my ring and he will stop hurting you. I don’t think he will hurt you though on purpose because he thinks your music is good too._

_I am embroidering now! I have sent a piece of my embroidery._

“Did you frame it, _Shou-kun_? Did you frame the embroidery?”

“SHUT _UP._ ”

_I hope you like it. This symbol means the place we live in. People who wear it are my friends. Some of them look different so if you find those people can you ask them how my brother is doing? You have to use my pen name. I don’t know if that works but if it doesn’t you can say what your symbol looks like and I think they will get it._

_But if they try really really hard to hurt you you have to hurt them back. I have emergency numbers in case that happens. It’s okay it’s just that sometimes they don’t want to be nice and work with everyone anymore and they will try very hard to stop us when that happens. You should only trust the friends I gave numbers for okay? But if they say they don’t want to work with me anymore you can’t trust them either. Don’t tell him about the rings. They are a secret and only you and the other one are allowed to know about them. My other friend will never hurt you for any of these reasons though he is just a jerk._

_Love Umi 8:^)_

“Is…is she talking about a mafia family’s crest?”

“Yeah, I think so. The variety is probably something like the two clans that make up the Akiyama-kai. But I’ve never heard of any group with this symbol. I thought it was a group of gangs or secret agents, originally, but…” He sighs and rub the back of his neck. “I’ve been thinking…maybe each member of the group had a ring, and she doesn’t want them to have that…Flame ability.”

“That sucks.” Hana places the letters back on the bed. “And I’m guessing this letter is why you want to be a secret agent?”

“It’s _pretty alarming?_ She only trusts only two people in the world, and she won’t even tell me who the other person is! And it’s possible he’ll try to hurt me if I get too close! And I don’t think her brothers died from an _illness!”_

“Well, now you know what it’s like to have your life threatened, so you’re making good progress. Besides…” She picks up the rifle and poses with it. “You got _me_ defending your quest of true love.”

Shouichi groans and buries his face in his hands. “It’s not like thaaaat.”

“I’m sorry, what was that about a word for _la meravigliaaa_?”

“I was talking about the ocean! Shut up!”

“What’s that? You were talking about the, what, the _Umiiii?”_

“ _Shut up!”_

A knock at the door sends both of them into a sudden, weighted silence.

“…Just a minute!” Shouichi calls. He quickly tugs the ring necklace over his head and stuffs it in a pocket inside his shirt, and does the same for the Sun ring.

“It’s Haru-chaaan!”

“E-Eh?” Shouichi jolts.

“Haru?” Hana whispers.

“From yesterday, remember? I wanted to tell you all the stuff I found out! And my sister is super worried about youuu.”

“ _Miura_ Haru?” Hana gasps. “As in, the sister who gets Miura-san’s groceries Miura Haru?”

“She makes _me_ get her groceries too,” Shouichi grumbles. “And get rid of that rifle!”

“No, I’m surrounded by criminals.” She still feels under the bed, and finds a space between the mattress and the bottom of the frame where she can stash the gun. She grabs the dial while Shouichi goes over to the door.

“So what did you nee—”

Shouichi’s voice dies on his tongue.

Miura Haru is surrounded by people in suits.

“Sorry,” Haru says sheepishly, “they’re, uhm, looking for somebody—”

“Kurokawa Hana?” A woman asks when she spots Hana frozen halfway through standing.

“Uh. Hello!” Hana cheers.

The woman holds two fingers to her ear. “Kurokawa Hana located in Room 109.”

“You _snitched?”_ Hana cries. “What are you even doing here, in Miyazawa, snitching!”

“My sister isn’t allowed to leave Namimori because she’s a criminal and she wanted to know if you were dead or not,” Haru says.

“We just want to know where Sawada Tsunayoshi is,” the woman interrupts.

“Tsuna? Tsuna’s missing?” Hana blinks.

“He was reported missing from your room ten minutes ago. Is he here?”

Hana looks between all of them, gears turning. They think Tsuna was in her room, which means Hayato wasn’t in his. Where would Tsuna even go? Did he run off to find her? Did he take off to get back home?

Her face smooths out.

“Is he not back yet?”

The woman raises her eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”

“I sent him off to get us drinks while he was out there digging for his bag, _duh_ ,” Hana says with theatric teenage snottiness. “Did he fall in the pile or something?”

The woman turns to her companions. “That matches the possible sightings. He must have left while he was still alone. Start a sweep of the area around the hotel.”

The men take off, leaving the woman with the three teens. “…Can you tell me what you were doing down here?”

“Uh, ditching to hang out with Shou-kun over here. Onii-san’s in the hospital or whatever because those mafia guys beat the crap out of him, and we can’t like, go see Gokudera and Takeshi-kun, right? We were gonna go visit Suzu-chan after, but he’s all like, ‘I don’t want to hang out with someone who doesn’t even talk’, which is like, rude, she kicked a bunch of yakuza ass for you and you’re discriminating against selective mutism? Or something, I think maybe she doesn’t talk because her voice is suuuuper wrecked but I think it sounds really adult and awesome so like, what’s the problem, amiright?”

Hana relishes how the woman’s eyes slowly glaze over. Unsurprisingly, Miura-san’s ditzy sister is following along earnestly. Seriously. Why is she even here! When did Miura-san send her!

“Anyway, we all met when we came to clean the beaches, and she hang out with the disabled kids, which was liiiiike, just Tsuna and Takeshi-kun and then her, and Onii-san was there for them. Omigod you will not believe how much of a trainwreck Gokudera was though! He was like, uhhmmmmmm, telling us what to do? ‘Cause he’s their gang boss or whatever, right. But he’s operating on like, prison rules, so people were roughhousing and he didn’t do anything, and people could fall on pipes and die, y’know? So we had to keep asking the _ONE_ adult for help but the guy keeps asking for money—”

The woman’s slow departure from the waking world ceases immediately. “Adult?”

“Uhmmmm, yeah? The chaperon is Yamazaki something. He is _such_ a jerk, I hope he gets arrested.” Hana cocks her hip and looks as vapid as she can physically manage.

“I…See. Thank you for your help.” The woman glances at Miura-san’s sister. “Can you perhaps stay in here, for now?”

“I gotta go home by this afternoon though…” The girl frowns.

“That’s enough.”

“’Kaaay.”

The woman leaves. Hana lets out all of her tension in one explosive sigh, clutching her heart. “Oh my _god,_ what is he _doing_.”

“Who? ‘Tsuna’?” Miura-san’s sister asks, looking between them.

“Yeah! Who runs off after almost getting murdered!” Hana flops back on the bed. “God, I wanna go hoooooooome.”

“What’s a word for beauty in a ‘miracle of nature’ way? Like _la meraviglia_ ,” Shouichi asks as he picks up his pad of paper again.

“Huh? What for?” The girl smiles.

Hana rolls over so she’s on her stomach and grins. “Shou-kun has a cruuuuush~”

The shrieking gasp of Miura-san’s sister is the loudest Hana has ever heard.

 

* * *

 

_Search: How to deal with trauma_

_Search: Sexual abuse as a child how to fix_

_Search: Wasn’t traumatized and now I am_

_Search: How to deal with killing people trauma_

_Search: How to deal with friend almost dying trauma_

“Sir?”

_Search: Reminders of things making you scared trauma_

_Search: Okay with sexually abuse as child but only bugs you when you’re older_

“Sir, you’re not allowed to have snacks in the booths—”

“ _Fuck off,”_ Tsuna says loudly, and shoves another fistful of rice crackers in his mouth. “Th’ one in Ko’kyo led me ha’ snacks.”

The attendant for the internet cafe sighs with the long-suffering exasperation of someone who just doesn’t want to bother. Tsuna flips him off even though the door’s closed and gets to flicking through his three dozen new tabs. His cheeks are hot with embarrassment at exposing himself to a search engine, but he’s still determined. Like hell he’s going to sit around, being _generically traumatized_. He’s useless, but not _that_ useless.

So, according to this, symptoms are like…

 _Frequent crying spells._ Nnnnope. He hasn’t cried in years, not counting the thing on the roof with Takeshi. Though he only got traumatized like…yesterday. Shit, is he going to start crying all the time now? _This is horrible._

 _Depression._ Noooooooooooooope. In fact, Tsuna feels _amazing_ , like he switched a tiny old black-and-white 50s TV out for a wall-consuming HDTV. He assumes this is because whatever was blocking his memories was also blocking his emotions, and now that he broke it, _everything is happening so much_. Including the trauma. Really gotta put a stop to that, he wants to enjoy this. He hasn’t felt this Okay since he first joined the Disciplinary Committee.

 _Loss of energy and fatigue._ This thing is just listing all the things he doesn’t have anymore. This website is useless.

 _Pessemism or indifference._ See??

 _Feelings of worthlessness and guilt._ Was he actually traumatized already and just _didn’t notice_ because his feelings were turned off? He _has_ been consistently avoiding a few triggers, like the sensation of rubbing circles into his back _(canyouhelpme)_ and the taste of _(allihaveis)_ jasmine tea. Maybe he was coping just fine with the buffer, because he _was_ coping, though he thought it was because of all the bullying. Though the eternal smoothing-over of his emotional state was, in restrospect, probably linked to the seal, which he is at least 99% sure he doesn’t have anymore.

What sort of seal was it, anyway? Well, a magic one, clearly. But, did it use the same magic as the others? Is the magic related to whatever he’s powered on? He distinctly remembers orange being a factor, which isn’t in line with any of the notes they took together. He would ask, but it would mean having to actually bring up the whole… _the whooooole_ …the…the…the _…_ rape. _Thing._

_**WHICH HE’S OBVIOUSLY NEVER GOING TO BRING UP EVER** _

Tsuna immediately closes the whole set of tabs and stuffs more crackers into his trembling mouth. He feels a shudder of disgust at the tiniest admission of it, a horrible crawling sensation of embarrassment and irrational self-loathing. He’s not sure why. It’s what actually happened. He’s known it for years! He knows it’s something that actually happened, he has had _years_ to know about it and deal with it and ultimately regard it as unimportant!

Maybe because he doesn’t remember the whole. _Thing_. Maybe he spent years with Schrodinger’s sexual abuse. Maybe he just clung to faded-around-the-edges memories of just _the Bed_ , and all the obvious aches and signs were just…something else. _‘Maybe it was just corn starch and water’,_ said Tsuna’s dim, sealed, denial-choked brain. _‘Maybe I fell down some stairs’._ The trauma isn’t even about the. What happened. Right? What bothered him was the way The Stranger wormed into his personal space, made him feel bad for hating it so much. None of his trauma was about. The stuff.

‘ _So maybe it didn’t happen’. ‘So maybe I can pretend it never happened and ignore it’._ It had just stopped so suddenly, going to Apartment 213 and seeing an empty shell and just _never having to deal with any of it ever again_.

There were no lasting scars. It was slowly drifting into a dark, dark place in his mind, where there’s nothing left but desolation.

That was stupid, this is stupid, he needs to fix it right now, and it’s starting to _piss him off_ that he can’t deal with _opening a few links._

Tsuna’s mouse hovers over the next set. The anger is helping, but the humiliation _burns_. Countless excuses are bubbling up _(not a big deal/already got over it/don’t remember any of it anyway/hasn’t affected me/I’ll cope eventually),_ but he bites his tongue and clicks anyway because he has to at least _check_.

It’s a symptom list for young children who went through the…who had been…who had the same thing he had.

 _Refusal to go home or go to school._ Tsuna adjusts his grip on his packet of crackers.

 _Trouble sleeping, refusal to go to bed._ He clutches it, and the scrunching feels too loud.

 _Secretiveness and unusual irritability._ He sucks in a steeling breath that takes too long to release.

_Refusal to be touched._

…

He could keep reading, or he could close this tab immediately and never look at it again and look at the one telling him how to stop feeling this way forever instead.

He does that.

The next tab is a relieving break in the anxious, over-exposed feeling writhing in his mind; _advice_. It tells him that in order to cope you should try putting yourself out there and doing productive stuff, which he’s already doing with the committee, if Hibari doesn’t murder him. He’s not sure what he’ll do if Hibari decides murder is on the menu. Maybe he’ll start a gang. He seems to be a veritable _magnet_ for criminals. He could be their Boss. Hayato would adore that.

There, see, he’s got _contingency plans_ and ways of _confronting his problems_. That’s like…stuff emotionally stable people have. He munches away at his crackers. The packet’s almost empty. Good thing he bought eight bags.

The page also tells him he shouldn’t think it’s his fault, which, yes? He knows that. Actually, this page is almost precisely as helpful as the other one. Why don’t people on the internet know how to cure his trauma. He was already doing most of it on accident.

He closes the page and presses on, courage slowly dwindling with each one he Xs out of. They’re all advice on self-betterment and dealing with stress things. Almost like there isn’t a cure for trauma.

…There isn’t a cure for trauma. That should have occurred to him. Basically right away.

He stares at the search page.

Then he clicks on the next tab, mostly out of misguided hope that maybe the completely obvious thing anyone would assume it is wrong after all.

This next page actually knows what those gross jasmine feelings are! It says this is a thing that happens when you have something called PTSD and that you’re supposed to do everything he was already doing to make them go away anyway.

_The internet is worthless to him._

Wait, no, it has a tutorial on how to deal with panic attacks. He actually needs that.

Tsuna clicks around his tabs, but all of them are just logical progressions of what he was going to do or is already doing or what he figured he ought to do, and none of them are cures to trauma, because, obviously, a cure does not exist. Even the optimistic thought of a therapist posting some long-term plan to make his life suck less doesn’t pan out. No one on the internet has answers.

He clears the rest of the tabs, not bothering to waste his time with pages that will tell him nothing, and deletes the search history so no one could even accidentally find out his tragic backstory.

Then he stares at the blank desktop background with a head full of empty.

Maybe he could talk to someone.

Or maybe he could not do that and go straight to Hakuyou and yell at the cherry guy for being a failure and a shitbag and then go home and hug his mom and never think about this again and then use the panic attack tutorial he found on the internet just in case he sucks at that (he will, he sucks at everything) and maybe actually ask the cherry guy if _he can_ _do that thing again because he’s never felt like this before and he felt fine once he had a better outlet and he just wants to—_

He flops forward so his head slams on the keyboard.

He’s not crying.

Tsuna sniffles and takes his bag of snacks out of the booth.

He can’t bring this up with his friends, but cherryhead was _there_ , and he was the one using the ability. Tsuna can ask him. He can just reference that day in particular and he wouldn’t have to explain anything about the situation, or even where they were. And he can ask about the flash of orange in the man’s eyes, and how hot his thumbs felt pressed against Tsuna’s forehead.

Tsuna’s fingers reach up to touch the skin above his brow. It just feels cold, now.

His whole palm spreads across his forehead, touching the hairline, and he clutches his face, taking in the tactile sensation, the pressure, the sense of gravity it gives him. He slowly sinks to the sidewalk just outside the cafe, _down down down_ until he’s crouching and has his head bowed into his lap, hands still clutching his skull like they can squeeze the fear out.

And there he sits, breath coming in short and sharp and shaking like a metal screw rattling down a steel pipe, too loud, too much, and vibrating so deeply his bones can feel it. His teeth are buzzing.

There’s a feeling he isn’t used to (hasn’t been used to in a very long time) crawling up over him, choking him out. A feeling like filth and dirtiness and being tarnished in some way. Something that’s become a part of him, like rust. Aching. Disgusting.

He wants to be held, to feel his mom’s warmth around him or Kyouko clutching tightly. He thought, a long long time ago, that he wasn’t good enough to talk to her (in the dying gasps of his ability to feel self-pity), but it wasn’t like that. Kyouko isn’t like that. If he doesn’t tell her, it’ll be because he doesn’t want to see her hurt for him.

So much warmth radiating from the people in his life, and he can’t even let himself absorb it. He feels like a chasm is beginning to stretch between them, and he doesn’t know how to close it, but he knows he has to, because without that warmth, he’ll topple into that chasm and disappear. He’ll vanish.

 _Goodness,_ the universe will think.

_That thing’s still here?_

Poof.

Tsuna’s breath comes in one, sharp, ragged wheeze, and is squeezed out with a broken sob. His thighs feel hot from the tears wetting them, and he already feels snot building up and making it even harder to breathe.

Tsuna sniffs up the mucus and tries mopping away the tears with the back of his hands, and his brain thinks _no, don’t do that._

He’ll make the blood streak.

Tsuna’s vision goes unfocused. He looks at his hands and sees no blood, but it doesn’t connect with the actual comprehension part of the brain, and the initial assumption that his hands are soaked in it takes a full ten or twenty seconds to be discredited. He just has hands. And he feels it, the dampness, hot liquid splashing over his front, and

He feels a shock of _something_ exploding over the back of his head, and it’s telling him to _get the hell out of there_. He tries to get to his feet, but he trips and scrapes his knees. The cement rubs painfully over his already-brittle skin, and he cries out this time.

The feeling of dread won’t go away. He dives into a neighbouring store and crouches by the bookcase. All his attempts to steady himself have gone out the window, and he’s hyperventilating again, and he’s dizzy and he feels like his palms are slick even though the tears are only dampening the back of his wrists.

Silence. His dry, dry hands splayed across the speckled ceramic tiles, set in warm sepia mosaics. Dark spots bloom over the floor as it absorbs his teardrops. He sniffs again and chokes a bit trying to swallow the mucus with his throat so tightly drawn.

Running feet.

“Check that street. It shouldn’t be too hard to find him. Can’t be that many injured teens around.”

_Already?_

And again with the hyperventilating. Tsuna crawls from the front of the store to the bright florescent lighting of what looks to be a makeup section and hides at the back of the aisle, out of sight from the window. He curls up into a ball and tries a little harder to mop up his face. Being threatened is easier to recover from than self-loathing, thankfully.

Well, it should have been obvious that if his dad’s in town, he knows Tsuna stabbed a man to death, but Tsuna was kind of hoping that he didn’t. But if he knew Tsuna stabbed a guy, he was probably going straight up to talk to him, and really, it’s more of a miracle he left before his dad could catch him escaping.

Tsuna pulls his shirt from where it’s tucked into his jeans and dries his face as far as he can get it. His breath still comes in thin and unsteady, but it’s a hell of a lot better than this morning’s panic attack, and he’ll take it.

They think he’s injured, but if someone saw his face earlier — and, well, a lot of people saw his face, to be honest — someone is bound to recognize him now that they’re actively looking. He needs to throw them off.

Tsuna pauses.

Wow, it’s almost like he’s in a _store full of makeup._

Tsuna grabs a lipstick that looks like it’s subtle enough to not look weird against his colourless pallor. He picks at his lips until he can get rid of the dry, cracked skin, and then runs the lipstick over them. He pops his lips and considers how totally absurd he looks. The dark eyeshadow just looks tacky, now, against…

Not the rotten wood colour he’s used to seeing, but pure, abyssal black. That’s…disconcerting. But if he was _bleeding_ black shit, it stands to assume it’d affect other parts of his body too. Unless all the vividness around him is because his pupil has opened super huge, which, yuck?

He’s never cared much for his eye colour and half his class has black eyes anyway, so he ignores it. He tries to think back to all the steps he was in too much of a rush to do before. Kyouko always puts on foundation, first, and theeeen…

He takes a compact of blush as applies it as gently as possible with two fingers. Kind of streaky. He walks along the aisles with a nervous, twitchy sort of energy, looking for some better way to use this stuff. He finds little cotton pads, and tears open a package to smear properly.

Next is…?

Well, he’s certainly not going to risk eyeliner, but the crayon thingie over there looks okay. He takes a red one and runs it over his lids so it matches the lipstick.

He feels like he needs something harder to change how he looks, but without the liner, and definitely without those _other_ pencils of dubious usage, all he has is mascara, which…can he even apply mascara? Is it like, hard? He’s not sure he likes having something near his eye when he’s the one faking out.

Hell, getting caught is worse than having ugly makeup. He takes something that looks huge, easy to apply, and waterproof, and applies it with tiny hairline strokes that barely graze it while his eye is closed. The effect gives him dark but not particularly long lashes that look kind of clumpy. Whatever. The point is that he looks _different._

Tsuna caps the mascara and looks around. He’s in some sort of… _beauty_ place. The shop transitions to the hairdresser’s next door, with hair dye lining the walls. He makes a beeline for it, already prepared to bleach his hair again, when he sees something that is approximately ten billion times faster — a line of fashion wigs. They’re clearly synthetic, but also, very pretty and soft-looking.

He picks the one with the cutest haircut (a super long red-brown one with flat bangs and long side fringes that frame the face and dangle past the shoulders) and shoves it onto his already-slicked hair. After a few minutes of adjustment where he tries to figure out what clips in and what sticks to the skull, it sits decently on his head.

He looks at the mirror.

Instead of old and tired and drained of all life, he’s an explosion of colour. He turns his head left and right, admiring the passable makeup job that gives his face some extra vibrancy. He can’t even see any teartracks in the foundation thanks to all that dabbing with the little cotton pad.

He looks different.

He looks good.

He looks alive, and warm, and okay.

“…Ma’am?”

Tsuna swivels to see an employee, holding the torn-open package of pads, who is eying his fistful of makeup tools uneasily.

“Are you going to pay for that?”

Tsuna opens his mouth. Closes it. Then pulls at the wad of money in his pocket. Bills fly out from the struggle and flutter to the floor. He looks at them, then the cashier, and flashes a fragile little smile.

“…Carry on, then,” says the employee.

 

* * *

 

Tetsuya feels more at ease today, and a bit guilty for feeling that way.

Paperwork and organization is going smoothly, and the appointments he’s upholding give his day a little more structure. He has Shintarou follow up on the West High thing because he’s distracted by his incessant sulking that Kyouko isn’t going to drop by today, and he has two cups of coffee to help him get through the day.

The school is sorely missing Kyouya’s presence already. The disobedient brats who did their best to do whatever they liked when Kyouya wasn’t looking have come out in full force today, thinking they have free reign now that the leader of the Disciplinary Committee isn’t there to stop them.

But Tetsuya did not take five years of staff training to be dismissed that easily.

By ten, he’s already… _taken care of_ at least six unruly kids. Normally he’d have Tsuna run them, but since he is ‘home sick’ and Tetsuya hadn’t bothered to teach anyone else to do it (on account to their violent attitudes and likelihood of intimidating them unnecessarily), he has no choice but to do it himself.

Home sick. That’s a euphemism if Tetsuya has ever heard one. If Kyouya were here, Tetsuya would call being ‘home sick’ as nearly suicidal, but since he isn’t, it’s just a _terrible idea_. Tetsuya has suspected for a little while that Tsuna isn’t actually entirely sure how the Disciplinary Committee smart-device works, and this might actually confirm it, because if he did know, he would have realized that the little tracking device in his gakuran is _also_ built into the smart-device. Tetsuya just has to open the map, and there’s an ‘out of range’ marker right by the kid’s name. He _left town_.

The only device that can actually check outside town belongs to Kyouya, though, so Tetsuya doesn’t know where the little brat went. Ah, well.

Tetsuya finishes running the punished boys through the registry, signing them up for detention. Tetsuya is, in the very least, accustomed to being the only competent one in the room.

It just feels wrong, somehow.

Tetsuya raps his fingers along the desk. No matter what he does, he’s distracted by the agony of waiting for Kyouya to come back. To see what he’ll have to piece back together. To see what’s even _left_.

In the end, he decides to go on a second patrol. It’s only been twenty minutes since he cleared the school, and there’s already a few kids skipping class. Honestly. No wonder Kyouya does these routines so often.

They leave when he shoos them. He sees some trash, and picks it up on the way back. Everything rings slightly empty, and he wishes he had the energy to make it through the day. He probably doesn’t. He should tell Komori to go get them something to eat.

It’s not even twelve yet.

Tetsuya begins his half-hearted trek back to the clubroom, but before he can even enter the building, Sasagawa Kyouko _nearly flings herself out the second-story window_.

“KUSAKABE-SENPAAAAIII!” She hollers, waving wildly as a friend tries to wrangle her back inside. “SENPAAIIII!”

“Sasagawa,” Tetsuya remarks flatly.

“You said I’m supposed to tell you when I have psychic visions,” she continues, dangling by her legs now, “and I don’t think I have visions at all, actually, I’m not some kind of oracle thing, but I just want you to know something horrible happened!”

“What?”

“I don’t know! It’s just horrible.” She wriggles back when her friend starts screaming at her. “But it’s at Hibari-senpai’s address!”

Tetsuya’s mouth parts.

Then he’s _racing_ off the school grounds, not even taking the time to call up someone to cover for him, across the roads, because he knows he knows he knows that psychic powers be damned if she has the sensitivity to read his mind she sure as hell has the sensitivity to feel the miasma that oozes from Kyouya’s father like toxic sludge, even from a distance. Kyouya can do it from a prefecture away, and _he’s_ not psychic.

Tetsuya takes the shortcut across the shrine, pushes himself so hard across the stone walkway that he feels like it wouldn’t be a surprise if he cracked it under his soles, and jumps clean over the walls of Kyouya’s home. The doors are drawn, and there is no hateful presence in the air. It is only 10:15 AM.

“Kyouya-san!” Tetsuya shouts as he clumsily discards his shoes. “Kyouya-san—”

He slides so far down the hallway he misses the door to the Vault, at first, but he catches the frame and pulls himself back to see inside.

The Vault door is open, a gaping hole in the floor, the doorhandle leaving a horrendous-looking crack along the cement ground that Tetsuya will have to paste over later.

He runs to Kyouya’s room, next. He doesn’t even think of what he should be afraid of, what to expect when he sees him, just that he sees him at all, alive and safe and _there_.

Tetsuya tears the door open so hard he almost rips it right off its rail.

Kyouya is here.

Mangled, but here. He’s sitting with his back to Tetsuya, but even from this position, Tetsuya can see his forearms are bruised so deeply he can’t see anything but the reddish purple of blood under skin. He’d be surprised if they weren’t broken. His elbows are torn to shreds, and there’s another ugly bruise blooming at his shoulder.

He looks terrible.

“Kyouya-san,” Tetsuya says softly.

Kyouya does not respond.

Tetsuya swallows and approaches him on unsteady feet. Kyouya is bandaging his brutalized forearms with slow, deliberate movements and trembling fingers. It’s gradual, and likely painful.

“Kyouya-san. Let me do that.”

Round, round.

Tetsuya treads a circle around Kyouya, watching for any sign of danger. Each step reveals more; the fingerprints bruised onto his throat, the vicious-looking texture burn making the entire right side of his face an irritated red, the plaster over a red blotch on his forehead.

“Kyouya-san.”

No answer. Round, round.

Tetsuya kneels down next to Kyouya and gently takes him by the shaking wrist.

“Let me do it.”

Kyouya doesn’t seem to see him. His eyes aren’t tracking, but they’re flicking around like he’s desperately trying to, wild and feral like a cornered animal in the dark. His face is completely slack.

So that’s it, then. A reminder.

“ _You need to be this strong.”_

“ _You never had a chance.”_

Petty.

Tetsuya makes to grab the bandage from Kyouya’s hand, but in a blur, the bandage is missing and Kyouya’s hand is gripped tight around Tetsuya’s wrist.

“Kyouy—”

Hibari’s eyes widen incrementally, and he _twists._

Tetsuya’s arm snaps clean in two.

He doesn’t quite get it at first, a delay in the pain, a lack of cues lining up. Kyouya doesn’t have the kind of grip required to break a bone that thick with just a twist of the wrist, so little strength was used, Kyouya doesn’t even seem to be aware Tetsuya is _there_.

And then the pain catches up with the rest of him, and it _explodes_.

Tetsuya falls back and _screams,_ and Kyouya returns to his deliberate bandaging, several worlds away, contemplating something infinitely more grave to him than broken bones. He’s fallen into an easy routine. He had a meltdown. _God it hurts._

When he’s finished covering most of both arms and Tetsuya has found a position where the very act of breathing won’t blind him with pain, Kyouya gets up and goes to the closet. He’s wearing a fresh shirt, just a simple tank, and he just grabs whatever’s closest to him; a hoodie. He pulls it on and covers his head with it.

“K-Kyou…ya…” Tetsuya grunts.

Kyouya doesn’t react. He takes his device from his end table and presses through a few buttons in a cursory check.

“Kyouya…please…”Tetsuya wheezes.

Kyouya blinks slowly at his device. His hand relaxes, and it drops to the floor. He makes to move to the door, but stumbles over his own feet and collapses into a heap.

What is he _doing?_ Kyouya needs to _sleep_ , he’s just spent two days getting blasted full-power with killing intent. This isn’t healthy, this is _dangerous_. He feels helpless as he sees Kyouya recover with those same gradual, almost mechanical movements and march out the door with a single-minded predatory focus. Tetsuya isn’t getting up any way but excruciatingly slow.

Tetsuya lets out a screaming grunt as he gets to his feet, tears pricking at his eyes, and he tries to make his way over to Kyouya. His foot nudges the device Kyouya had dropped, and Tetsuya looks down.

It’s the town map.

With the empty marker next to Sawada Tsunayoshi’s name.

“Oh _no_.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tsuna's googling is me projecting. I didn't have his self-awareness or PTSD, but after a while of being a teen on the internet someone said 'actually, kids start being sexually active around 14 or so', and I was like….lol…..wait…..,, and spent 4 hours on Wikipedia learning how CSA/CoCSA works. So there's MY tragic backstory
> 
> I decided to focus on introspection, nerves, and catharsis instead of my usual melodrama and angst because I find a lot of dramatic depictions of sexual abuse immensely unpalatable. It’s either A) torture porn where the interaction is completely explicit and meant to titillate the reader like a horror scene or B) all about how dreadful and destructive and character-breaking and all-consumingly tragic it is. The primary reason Tsuna is afraid to bring it up with anyone is because he’s afraid of being treated like it’s the latter (which is a feeling common to survivors, especially ones who cope well — there’s a sense of feeling obligated to suffer).
> 
> I suppose I should include a little lesson on some stuff too? My sexual abuse started at an extremely young age and didn’t involve any violence, but to this day I struggle with a lot of basic stuff people who like, haven’t been abused at all don’t have to deal with, like a sense of boundaries, or what sexuality even is, or sexual intrusive thoughts, or a lack of respect for my own body (even as an asexual). Experiencing non-physical, non-threatening abuse as a child still severely impacts your development, even if the symptoms are unclear, and there is no such thing as ‘mature for their age’; sexual abuse just straight-up alters developmental milestones, and it’s unsafe to disrupt them like that. Not having a traumatic reaction to a sexual encounter doesn’t make the abuse okay, because the developmental milestone has been affected. It’s why people feel uncomfortable with teenagers dating adults, even when they’re 18; you’re still developing, and if you make even the tiniest misstep, you might have to spend the next 10 years trying to deprogram broken perceptions of how the world really works. Whether or not you experience violence or how worldly you are is totally irrelevant to that.
> 
> Tsuna _was_ traumatized, though, and now that Tsuna is more exposed and more aware, it’s going to permanently affect his character! I don’t plan to get as intense as it's gotten (and will get) in this arc in the next book, but it’s still tangible and important.
> 
> Lastly, canon!Tsuna doesn’t have this history. The emotional weakness that was preyed upon is something specific to DETsuna.


	29. The Recovery Of Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Self-harm (with the intent to incite a supernatural effect), blood, wee bit of body horror

Tsuna does not often shop with Kyouko. He doesn’t even spend a whole lot of time with her. Tsuna’s favourite past-time with friends is being in the vicinity of a friend without meaningful obligations, so he mostly likes going out to eat with her or hanging out with her at school, and any little outings they go on are on her terms, so it really depends on whether or not she has plans with friends at the time.

He has clearly been missing out.

Shopping by himself is a flurry of compulsions. The moment he enters the resale shop, he is yanking things off shelves and hooks the moment he sees them. The belt with a buckle shaped like a cat head. The brown bomber jacket hanging over the 20% off section. A scrap of red cloth he thinks might be a neckscarf, but can’t be sure. Several pieces of jewelry. The first frilly dress he sees. The next four frilly dresses. Every shirt he sees with a print he likes that he doesn’t have to sort through racks for. Three pairs of stockings. Socks. (That one is a necessity. He forgot to wear socks.)

By the time he gets to the dressing rooms, he has to pick up a duffel bag to hold all the crap he’s found. As it is, he ends up heaving the giant pile and throwing it on the floor. All of it is very cute. As a cute girl who likes cute things, his disguise should be conceptually consistent too. Most cute girls know how to wear matching ensembles.

How do girls make cute ensembles anyway? Tsuna frowns at his pile. Matching colours, maybe? The only colours he has to work with is brown and red, so he should wear brown and red things, maybe.

He takes a red dress that’s puffy and made out of silky red fabric that comes up just before the breast and a black collar and sleeves with red piping. It looks very fancy, and it should theoretically match his makeup. He slips his shirt over his head and shuffles out of his pants.

When he lifts his arms over his head to figure out where the frills end and the opening of the dress begins, he notices the tiny, barely-visible injection scar on his arm, where the histrelin implant used to go. The bump he’s gotten used to being there is gone, now. He’ll be fourteen soon, so he doesn’t need blockers anymore.

Tsuna yanks the dress over his head and smooths it out.

He’s leaving his childhood behind. Eventually, he’s going to have _puberty,_ and not going to look ten years old anymore. He won’t be tinier than literally everyone his age. This is very appealing to him, though he won’t be able to capitalize on the bargains of the children’s section of every store like this anymore. Being this small is hell on his constitution.

Tsuna pulls on a pair of black leggings to hide his skinny, stick-like legs with their saggy, scraped knees, and then pulls on a pair of socks because wearing shoes without them is really starting to chafe, and it’s getting a little sweaty.

He considers his options for shoes. He… _shouldn’t_ wear white shoes, maybe, because…the rest of his outfit isn’t white? In that case, his shoes should be…red, or black, like the dress.

Tsuna tip-toes out of the changing room and goes over to the shoes rack. He sorts through the girls’ shoes until he finds something that looks fancy in his size. And they’re red! He clacks the glossy mary-janes together cheerfully as he makes his way back to the changing room.

To finish the outfit, he decides on the brown leather bomber jacket. It’s really hot out, but also, this is a really awesome jacket. And it’s got these little yellow patches on the elbows!

Tsuna tugs at his new ensemble and looks himself over in the mirror. There, there’s red all over his body. That’s how ensembles work, he is pretty sure! And the dress is all cute and poofy so it flares out from under the jacket. His makeup looks even more vivid on his face, and it looks nice with the reddish brown of his hair. He flips it and admires himself side-to-side, checking every angle. Dame-Tsuna is practically invisible under all of this. There is just a beautiful, pretty young girl, who doesn’t even look ten years old, looking back at him in the mirror.

He quirks his leg up, and puts up a double-peace sign like Kyouko does in camera booths. Then he tries elegant with pushing his hair back with one hand. Then he tries a few of the usual poses he sees in girls’ magazines, like leaning forward so his hair spills over, and leaning back with his hands held loosely together with his head tilted to the side, holding his skirt up like he’s treading water, holding a closed half-fist to his mouth cutely…

He swivels to face the mirror face-on, and makes a pawing motion. “Nyaaa.”

Cute.

Tsuna is very cute.

Tsuna sinks to the floor and peeks over his knees, regarding the mirror doubtfully. Everyone treats him terribly. In what universe is he cute?

But Kyouko wouldn’t wear makeup so often if it didn’t have any sort of purpose. Maybe it’s just hiding all his unappealing features, so all he can see is someone who’s pretty. He’s prettier than all the girls in class. He’s prettier than Hana.

Tsuna flops into his giant pile of clothes with satisfied smile. Look at him! Dame-Tsuna is prettier than everyone! Dame-Tsuna is so pretty he’s just like Kyouko! Dame-Tsuna is so pretty he could have a modeling career!

He kicks his legs as he examines his nails. He is not very good at applying nail polish, but he wants to wear some anyway. Seeing as he’s so cute! He’ll make it black, since he won’t be wearing the costume forever, and it would look better with his hair, anyway.

He stops kicking his legs and frowns at the ceiling. His hair is _black_ now. When the hell did that happen? There’s a conceptual through-line — his mom told them about his hair, and they promised to fix the grease — but he can’t remember it actually being changed.

He’s going to preemptively blame Hana.

Tsuna scoops his clothes up and stuffs them in his bag so he can carry them to the counter, which is covered in accessories. He looks over the rings, but they look like they’d interfere with his knuckledusters. He takes a bracelet made of little plastic beads. They’re yellow, but so is his jacket, so it works. There’s a little cardboard box full of little half-used bottles of nailpolish, too, with a bunch of more uncommon colours, including black.

While the clerk is busying himself with Tsuna’s purchase, Tsuna hunts for more things to spend money on. There’s also a rack of hair things, including…

A pair of black felt cat ears.

He doesn’t know where his other cat ears went, but he’s assuming they were left soaking in the trash, so it would be prudent to buy a new pair. He bounces back to the till with it sitting nicely on his wig.

“That’ll be, uhm…” The clerk looks Tsuna over. “…2,800 yen.”

Tsuna digs into the jeans sitting in the crook of his arm and yanks out his wad of bills with a grin.

He doesn’t spend his allowance often, so his money hoard is pretty fat, about 35,000 yen or so. He would have more, but the loan he asked from his mom is still at home, waiting to be spent on Hayato’s school renovations. A thing to look forward to this weekend, maybe. He was going to help out with his mom with the reconstruction, something they haven’t done since repainting the guest room last year.

Tsuna hikes the duffel bag up on his shoulder and fans himself out in the warm weather. Maybe the bomber jacket was, in fact, a terrible idea. He pulls it off and resolves to put it back on when the sun sets.

The dress sleeves end in frilly white cuffs just before the wrist, so at least he can show off his bracelet. He wants to put on his nailpolish now, but, again, he sucks at putting on nailpolish, so he’ll need some method of keeping it from turning into a catastrophe.

He goes into a nearby restaurant and slips into the bathroom, where he is free to sit on the toilet with his legs propped up as a table to place his hand on as he carefully runs the brush over his nails.

The polish bleeds a lot, and stains the raised skin around the enamel, which no amount of dabbing with wet toilet paper can remedy. He suspects this is just shitty nailpolish. He doesn’t get the sides of his finger, though, which is a lot better than he usually does. Tsuna flaps his hand around to dry it faster while examining the bottle. He should ask Kyouko about which brands to buy.

When the nailpolish seems like it should be just sticky rather than wet, he dares to try his other hand. Same problem. He pauses in the middle of pulling out a new wet brush, wondering if there’s a better way to go about this. Maybe he could buy a better brand from that beauty shop?

The glob of polish sticking to the brush trembles, and falls on his exposed wrist. Tsuna flinches, and quickly moves to wipe it off with his square of damp tissue before it dries onto his skin. It is very hard, because his left hand isn’t dry yet.

He somehow manages to clear it without ruining his acceptable nail job. Tsuna lets out a steadying breath, and examines his wrist for any sign of remaining polish.

A memory rises unbidden to his mind — a thin slice around his arm, oozing abyss-coloured ashy smoke, a vantablack that denied human perception.

And now, smooth and unbroken skin.

How much of the ability is he imagining? How much of it is the seal? What can the ability even do? If it’s so awesome, why doesn’t that guy go around sealing _everybody?_

Tsuna finishes his nailpolish, ruminating on the questions.

If he has to guess, the abilities he has now…he’s healed quickly pretty much his entire life, so the fact the wound where he was leaking magic black shit is gone now isn’t a huge surprise. Neither is the healed rib. He’s…still not sure how fast the average person heals in comparison to him, but he’s damn sure it’s not ‘instantaneously’.

What else…if it has to be something he’s had before but got more severe in the ruin, right? …That’s right! The dodging! He’s clumsy as hell and his instincts are pathetic, but he somehow managed to dodge the strongest person in Namimori under twenty? _Unlikely_. That same ability to read someone’s movements had to be how he managed to tackle a guy to the ground and stab him in the face. He would be way too slow for it otherwise.

So, basically, something closer to instinct. If he had strong instincts before, and it’s gotten even stronger, does that mean he has some sort of… _super_ instincts now?

Has he used it since then? Maybe. During his escape, he thinks. He should figure out how to do that on command. Sounds useful.

Tsuna makes sure his nails are more-or-less dry and gets up to face the mirror. He grips the sink and glares at his reflection. What had triggered the event? With Hibari, his brain turns off in the face of a threat. Does he have to be threatened? Is it some sort of self-preservation thing?

But…when Hibari was ready to hurt him, Tsuna was aware of it before he actually had to defend himself. Perceived threat? Is he threatened by his _dad’s existence_?

Tsuna closes his eyes. No, it probably has something to do with how he’s _always_ interacted with the seal.

Smooth it over.

The scariest thing about this too-bright world is that he can’t just _turn it off._ He always had free reign over his feelings, and now it’s vivid and explosive and terrifying. Every single time something stressful happened, he could just smooth out the ripples, and instantly feel better. It robbed him of a personality, but at least he felt _stable_.

How does one smooth over broken scraps, anyway?

Maybe he needs an incentive.

Tsuna digs through his bag until he finds a necklace with a star-shaped pendant. He holds it carefully, and rests his hand against the sink.

_Here goes nothing._

He falters once or twice, but the fact it dealt with _broken ribs_ is enough to get him to drive the pendant into the flesh of his wrist hard enough to break skin. He immediately buckles over in pain — the pendant is pointy, but not sharp, and the crushing sensation is _hell_. A streak of blood slides down the side of his arm to drip onto the floor.

Tsuna focuses on how much he doesn’t want to be in pain at the moment, and does his best to flatten that situation. To reduce it. Smooth it. Remove it.

Remove everything, eradicate it, until all that’s left is desolation.

The blood shivers, then evaporates into grey mist. Tsuna slowly lifts his head to examine the wound. It’s bubbling some truly nasty-looking black shit. It’s not abyss-coloured, which is somewhat reassuring, but still. Augh. Bubbling.

It looks too heavy to flare up like Takeshi’s Rain Flame did. He scoops some of it, and it floats away like mist. It feels like a soft current. Definitely very ash-like.

He watches in fascination as the black blood is pulled back into the wound, and winces as the beyond unpleasant sensation of it twisting into a monochrome vortex that pulls in _way_ deeper than he stabbed. His wrist makes a truly horrifying little _‘pop!’_ noise, and all the black ash explodes into grey dust that vanishes into thin air.

His wrist is fine. The skin is all shiny and it hurts like _hell_ all the way to the bone, but it’s unbroken again.

Okay. Super instincts and world’s most unpleasant healing ability. That’s…weirdly specific.

Tsuna shakes his hand again. Is this something he’s had even before the seal, or did cherryhead mess with it somehow? There’s something… _unpleasant_ about the goopy blood dust, maybe the fact that his body oozes goopy blood dust at all. But if he activated his Super Instincts, maybe that unpleasantness is actually _‘that’s not supposed to do that, holy shit’_.

Apparently everyone is kinda magic. Maybe this is an innate ability of one of the magic colours. He’ll have to bring that up when he goes back home to ruin cherryhead’s whole life.

Tsuna puts the necklace back into the bag and leaves the bathroom, not feeling particularly satisfied.

There is a iny black dog barking at the restaurant door.

Tsuna freezes. It appears to be looking straight at him. He guesses that isn’t too weird. Magic black gunk feels like something that could set off animals.

He slowly approaches the door, and watches how the dog reacts. It looks…kind of happy? It’s very cute and small, and it’s hopping around like it wants to play. He pushes the door open, and steps outside. The dog bounces from side to side and paws at his legs. Tsuna leans over to let the dog sniff him. It licks his fingers.

“Okay,” Tsuna says. _Not_ a reaction magic black gunk would typically cause. Maybe.

He steps away from the door, and the dog follows him down the road, until he stops at a bench overlooking a park. He sits down. The dog hops onto the bench and climbs into his lap, where it sits down and pants at him. _Expectantly._

Tsuna slowly starts stroking the dog. The dog lowers its head to rest on its front paws and wriggles its little poofy bum.

Did…did Tsuna just steal a dog?

He’s not sure how he’s going to ditch the animal. It seems to like him purely on principle. Is he going to start trailing animals everywhere? How is he going to make _that_ stop? What’s the opposite of desolation, willpower?

Tsuna Wills the dog to go away.

The dog does not react.

_Dammit._

He flops back in his seat and continues petting the dog, because it is very cute. It doesn’t seem to have a collar. Maybe it’s not anybody’s dog. Maybe it’s a magic dog. It isn’t as if the local birds are flocking to his side, or anything. Whatever it is, it likes him a lot.

“What dreaded abomination have you lead me to?”

Tsuna jerks to look behind him. There’s a tiny figure in a hooded jacket standing next to the bench. Their mouth is pinched, and they have an indigo pacifier hanging from their neck. It’s dim and flickering slightly, like a dying lightbulb. There’s a series of chains balled in their tiny little fists.

Tsuna has seen that uniform before. He sits perfectly still and tries to hide behind his hair.

“Name yourself, creature. A puppet? A construct? A weapon?”

“A middle-schooler,” Tsuna says earnestly. In falsetto. This is actually very easy, as he mostly sounds like a girl anyway.

“ _You know what I’m referring to.”_

Tsuna’s fingers adjust nervously in the dog’s fluffy fur. He can’t believe he’s getting chastised by a 3-year-old, but appearances can probably be deceiving, because the baby is wearing what Tsuna suspects is _the Varia uniform_. He _knows_ it’s the Varia uniform because the Varia leader’s arrival had been haunting him since they met. This tiny babything likely knows all about…about…

Tsuna stares off into space.

Then he whirls to look at the baby. “Are you familiar with the colour orange?”

The baby pauses. Then opens their mouth in an action so pointed Tsuna feels like he has to keep going.

“Like…the thing around your neck. It’s…purple-y. Indigo. That’s a magical colour, right?” He wishes there was a less dumb way to talk about this. “What about orange, then?”

“You think I’ll divulge the location of the Sky pacifier?”

“What? No, I mean, I don’t know how magic works, but I know one of them is orange. Do you know what it does? Is it called a Sky?”

The baby’s mouth pinches even tighter, looking like they’re deliberating over something. Finally, they lean back and begin to wrap the pacifier up in the chains. “You’re not playing dumb, are you?”

“I am very dumb. I get single digits on my test scores.”

“What will you pay me to tell you anything?”

“Uh. I’ll tell you why I feel like an abomination. And I’ll give you your dog back.”

“Keep it. It’s poorly trained.” The baby folds their arms behind their back. “The Sky is a harmonious aspect. It harmonizes. It has the lowest energy cost.”

“There’s _costs?_ Takeshi made the whole ruin light up!”

“It had a battery. Information. Now.”

Tsuna really don’t know how to bargain with people, or how to be sly, or any of that. He just shrugs. It’s not like the tiny assassin baby will drill him on context. The tiny assassin baby has no reason to care. “Someone with the, uh, ‘Sky’ ability used their powers to put some sort of… _limitation_ on me. It was supposed to be a memory block. Except it didn’t work. When I broke it, it gave me ungodly hellpowers.”

The baby makes a thinking pose, before nodding slowly. “That person wasn’t an old man, was it?”

“Uh. No.”

“Of course…” The baby takes a few cautious steps towards Tsuna. The pacifier, now wrapped up in chains, flickers more wildly, emitting huge bursts of light before dipping into darkness. The baby takes a few steps back, and the flickering becomes less severe. “It’s a _vacuum._ The suppression simply imploded without the reinforcement. I’ve never met someone awake to use it.”

“I _imploded_?”

The baby waves him off. “You’re not a vegetable, clearly it’s nothing to worry about. It should go away eventually. Excuse me.”

“Hey, hold on, tell me more about how I imploded! _This sounds important!”_

The baby ignores him, waddling over across the sidewalk to make a call with their tiny cellphone. A frog crawls out from under their hood and sits on top of their head to glare at Tsuna. The dog in his lap barks at it, and then settles again so Tsuna can resume petting.

“It’s Mammon. Where are you? They’re asking questions. …I wouldn’t be surprised. Would you like me to interfere? …Understood. I’ve found an asset if he won’t listen to reason. …A rare resource. What better way to eliminate a Flame’s ability than to eliminate the Flame?”

That probably would have sounded cool if it were a TV show and Tsuna could hear the person the baby — Mammon — was talking to. Probably the long-haired guy. What was his name, Skull? No, there was an O. Skull-o? Spermbot? Spermbot Skull-O? Hair guy. Hair guy told him not to join the mafia, and he probably did it because he personally knew Tsuna’s assumed mafia dad, so clearly, this is some sort of _mafia assassin baby_. With a pet frog.

Mammon snaps the cellphone shut after a bit of mumbling and looks at Tsuna. Tsuna smiles a little too widely. He is not very used to smiling.

“Give me your contact information.”

“Why?”

“I’ll need to buy your presence later. You’ll just need to stand around, nothing worth complaining about. I can pay you in a cure for your little condition, as well. I advise you take care of it. It’s abominable.”

Tsuna frowns. “I _like_ my condition. It gives me healing powers.”

“Mu. It’s disgusting and against all laws of nature. Phone number.” Mammon wriggles their fingers impatiently.

Tsuna digs through his pockets. He brought his device, didn’t he? He’d be a fool not to. That’s reckless behaviour, right there.

It takes him another minute of digging before he finds it in his jeans, stuffed in the corner of his bag. The device is snatched out of his hand, and the baby presses buttons at high speeds.

“You don’t have permission to contact us. You never saw me. The dog is yours. Tell anyone and I’ll bankrupt your whole family.”

“Uh. Okay.”

The baby vanishes.

Holy shit. That was _exactly_ like all of Tsuna’s self-destructive fantasies.

The universe probably didn’t erase Mammon, though. Must be the indigo magics. Did they write anything about indigo? There’s the Rain Flames, the…that red stuff, the glitter shit, the Sky Flames — they _did_ cover that, actually, one of Shouichi’s rings is orange — and then…

Illusions. Indigo is the illusions colour.

He’s learning things!

The dog barks.

“ _Yeah!!”_ Says Tsuna.

 

* * *

 

Shamal takes a private plane straight to Miyazawa by lying through his teeth about CEDEF casualties. As one of the rare doctors who know how to deal with Flame conditions, they’d let him in even if he told them he’s there for an outbreak of a rare virus that turns the hair of Storm users bubblegum pink.

They’re at a Level 3 wind-down when he gets there. They’ll probably be gone by morning, but Hayato’s little friend will be dead by then, so he doesn’t bother waiting around for an opening. He just marches in like he owns the place and calls Hayato back.

“ _H-Hello?”_ Hayato answers.

“I’m at the hotel. Room?”

“ _Penthouse_ — _second door on your left._ ”

“Penthouse? The hell are you doing up there?”

“ _We’re, uh. Persons of interest. His skin is looking kinda bubbly, is that supposed to happen?”_

“That’s just a rash, don’t worry. Irritated skin is nothing. The real problem is when he starts turning purple. Be right up.”

Shamal bypasses several agents with a nod, and no one stops him on his way to the elevator. He doesn’t see Sawada around. It’ll be hell trying to excuse himself then.

He marches up to the doors confidently. There’s only two guards. “Sawada sent me up. Gokudera Hayato?”

The guards cower in the shadow of theoretical authority and let him open the door himself. He takes off his shoes, as is only polite, and looks around. “Hayato.”

Hayato _flings_ himself from the bathroom. He looks terrible. He’s covered in little scrapes, and the pallid complexion is turning his fading stakeout tan grey. His skin is the texture of candlewax.

“I don’t treat men. Unpleasant and disgusting all-around. You’re damn lucky I have personal interest in this case.” Shamal marches into the bathroom and examines his patient. Bloated, but very limited in terms of burst blood vessels. Should be only slightly bruised when he recovers. The rash is spread up his right side, while his left…

There’s a dark blue stain ringing his wrist, buzzing with energy. It looks like a handprint. There’s another mark on his forehead, where the conduit solution has been _burnt into the boy’s skin_.

That’s pretty fucking wild.

“What’s _wrong_ with him?” Hayato whines, like a 13-year-old.

“It’s called Angelitis. Named after the recovery state and its reverse condition. Biblical angels, I’m talking, not Renaissance art angels.” Shamal opens his case and sorts through his collection of capsules. “That reverse, Skullitis, is a condition that induces anxiety and forces you to think of a bunch of embarrassing things, which start developing on the body as pictures or words, depending on how you think. That’s the deflating one I asked you about. Skullitis is caused by the body losing a sense of how much energy it should be emitting, and throwing you into Flame debt. If Flames were a tap, Skullitis is the crowbar that tears it right out of the wall. And then shames you to death. Potent stuff. Got that in ‘86.”

He finds the section he needs, and sorts through the pairs. “Angelitis is the opposite problem. His body has more than enough energy to work with, but the tap has been corked in some way. The reason he isn’t dead from internal bleeding yet is because his body isn’t swelling with blown vessels, it’s swelling with _energy_. We just gotta take the cork out. He may develop Aphasia for a few days. It’ll go away eventually.”

Shamal finds the pair of diseases, and picks the Negative of the two. He pops it open, and strings a path along for the mosquito inside. The trident-shaped insect floats along until it lands on the boy’s wrist, and it injects the remedy, before crumpling into dust. He starts preparing a new packet of medicine to replace it.

“That’s…that’s it?”

“Nooope.”

The patient’s entire body catches fire.

“ _That’s_ it.”

He’s got a pretty pure Rain Flame, Shamal has to admit. It’s thick, slow, and full of sublines. If he had to guess, he’d say the boy is an external emitter. A damn rare sight, these days. Good, pure Rain Flames are very heavy, and rarely leave the body so smoothly.

Hayato watches as his friend gradually deflates amid a torrent of blue fire that licks all the way up the walls of the bathtub/shower hybrid stall.

“What the _fuck_?”

“It’s a double-reversible condition. I’ve gotten all of them at least once in my life.” Shamal puts a bit of the skullitis base into a dish and opens his jar of larvae. He uses a tweezer to extract one and drop it into the medicine, and plucks the trident from the patient’s arm. Shamal dips that into a disinfecting solution and drops it into the dish with the larvae, which wriggles into the head of the trident. After a moment, it suddenly balloons and turns an ashy black, and legs and wings sprout out.

“What was _that?”_

“They’re not real mosquitos, they just use mosquitos for the shape. If they were real, I’d have to feed them.” He sticks it back into the capsule and puts it where it belongs. “Anything else I need to worry about?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but Hayato looks hesitant. “I, uh…I was wondering…”

“Yeeeees.” Son of a bitch.

“Is there anything related to this…this _magic_ stuff that could make someone…just, lose it? And…And attack someone, even if they weren’t capable of something like that normally? Just…just from having your magic forced out, maybe?”

“That sounds less like a sign of _having_ Flames and more like being _subjected_ to them.” Shamal snaps the case shut. “They work in a lot of ways, kid. Killing intent is the worst of them.”

Hayato frowns. “Killing intent?”

“Imagine, for a moment, the very air trying to strangle you. Choking you. Filling you with your most primal fears. Like trying to swallow razors.” Shamal grips his neck. “It’s pretty advanced, and requires a lot of precision, but…ten minutes of that, and _anyone_ would go insane.”

 

* * *

 

Tsuna is about to fall asleep when every survival instinct in his body activates at the same time and he falls off the bench with a scream.

The dog barks and hops out of the way. He has named it Hatachi, since it keeps trying to eat the baseball hat with the ‘20’ he got from the resale shop. He has called his mom and she said they can have a dog. It is his dog now and he loves it very much. He also told her that he loves her very much. Then he went to have lunch with his dog and fed it meat scraps and it was _such_ a good day.

But now there is none of that, because the very air seems to be rebelling against him. He instinctively clamps down on the intrusive sensation, and it dissipates around him. He thinks he might be sucking it up, if Mammon’s opinion can be trusted.

Tsuna turns to the source. A figure with dark hair, dressed casually, marching towards him with intent. There’s something glinting in their hands. Silvery, and long, like…tonfas…

_Hold on._

“ _Hibari-san?”_ Tsuna blurts out loud. Hibari? _Why the hell is Hibari here?_ And in a _hoodie?_ And in jeans? Hibari not in uniform, in a hoodie, and jeans? Is that a _fitted_ hoodie? Why would Hibari wear a fitted hoodie? What about his uniform? _Why_. Tsuna feels like his entire worldview has been turned on its axis, and this is just a hallucination induced by stabbing himself in the arm with a blunt instrument. Hibari, out of Miyazawa, in casual dress. Impossible.

Hibari-in-casual-dress is radiating a lethal aura that makes everyone in his path shrivel away from him, even the grass, which is admittedly impressive. Several people appear to be having panic attacks, and they’re not even standing near him. Tsuna scoots away, and then lets out a weak cry of dismay when his new best friend Hatachi barks and goes running up to meet the incoming messenger of death.

Hibari has come to kill him. Tsuna knew it will happen. And now he must die, for the sake of his treacherous dog.

Hibari draws in the world like a magnet, seeming to drink it in, absorbing it the way a true vacuum never could. He’s not a black hole, he’s a _sun_. The laws of existence demand that Tsuna pays exclusive attention to him, orbits around him, and he couldn’t flee if he tried. Hibari’s usual cloak of entitlement and battleglory has consumed both him and the area around him, so potent it prickles against Tsuna’s skin.

Tsuna scrambles to find his knuckledusters in his bag. Hibari’s existence is a Fact even when not directly looking at him, and he doesn’t need to look over his shoulder to know where he is. It’s really disconcerting.

Tsuna finally tears out his weapons and fits them just as Hibari comes into range.

“Hibari-san,” he breathes, “I have reasons—”

Hibari strikes, and Tsuna jumps out of the way.

The bench _explodes._

Splinters go flying, a few stabbing into Tsuna’s arms when he tries to protect his face, and he winces at the sensation. He dashes backwards and plucks them out. Thankfully, a bench exploding under Hibari’s tonfas is more than enough to set him off, and there’s no blood, just the Ashes. His arms make gross popping noises as his flesh snaps back into place. Maybe the baby was right, and he _should_ remove his ungodly hellpowers. That is never not totally nasty. He hopes Mammon calls him.

Hibari’s face is…unsettling. His eyes aren’t tracking, his hair is a mess, and he’s covered in bruises. He looks like he’s been recently hit by a truck and is fighting through a concussion. Knowing Hibari, this may actually be exactly what happened.

Tsuna eyes the bench.

It takes him a moment to really comprehend the tonfa was aiming for _him_.

Hibari wobbles in place, looking furious and feral, and Tsuna hisses as he just barely dodges one strike, then the other, perceptions narrowing every time he just barely gets away with his skull intact. The tonfas seem to sizzle with heat, which isn’t comforting.

“Hibari-san, please—”

Another strike like a punch that doesn’t hit, but still makes his face go _pop!_

He does not want to know what kind of injury is healing. Whatever it is, it hurts a _lot_ , and he may be going into shock.

Hibari is trying to kill him. That’s not hyperbole.

Why? _Why??_ Why is _any of this_ happening?

Tsuna dances out of range of another tonfa strike that vibrates through his bones. He’s starting to think that maybe the magic powers don’t end at Miyazawa, but he doesn’t know what’s causing this, he doesn’t know how to stop—

Oh, duh. Vacuums. Imploding. Light-absorbing Ash blood Super Instincts that help him fight. _Whatever,_ right??

Tsuna’s brain shuts off.

Five seconds later, Hibari is flat on his ass, with Tsuna’s hand tight around his throat.

He passes out in all of three seconds.

“Yeah!!” Tsuna shouts at the sky. Hatachi barks its agreement.

 

* * *

 

Hayato’s relief rarely makes him feel better.

It comes with being constantly under threat with people picking at you for weakness. When he’s relieved, every bit of tension unwinds, and he’s hit with all the exhaustion he’s forced himself not to feel. The bunched muscles and careful breathing collapses into violent shaking and choking on air. He’s dizzy with it, and the world tilts as his brain struggles with the concept of oxygen. The threat is over, now.

Yamamoto is going to be okay.

Hayato feels no accomplishment.

It wasn’t him that cured Yamamoto, and his contribution was almost meaningless. He probably should have picked up on how sick Yamamoto was. He should have been around to stop Yamamoto from being sick in the first place. Yamamoto had to save Tsuna and Kurokawa by himself, some punk-ass civilian who didn’t know shit, while Hayato was off having a crisis of faith on whether murder was bad. _And then Tsuna went ahead and did some murder anyway!_ What was the point!

He feels useless and anxious, and he doesn’t even know if he can trust the new party he brought into the mix, and he can’t double-check with his boss because Tsuna is _fucking gone_. Tsuna all but told him _directly_ that he was going to ditch, and Hayato just, just—!!

“Can you tell me what dying will bullets were doing in a Japanese resort town?” Shamal asks.

Hayato drags a hand down his face. He feels like a virus is eating him from the inside. Chewing. “…The Bambino Beelzebub had the bullets. He loaded them into a gun and fired on him. I wasn’t there. Boss says that he was doing it to check for Flame aspects. He wanted a Rain specifically, to activate this battery thing inside the ruin. _Yamamoto_ says that it’s this…I don’t know, hunk of rock and a bangle. It got out of hand somehow and gave everyone superpowers. No one knows _why_.”

“Woah, rewind, _Bambino Beelzebub?_ What the _hell_ was he doing here?” Shamal balks.

“The ruins are Vongola, and have these…I don’t know, conduit things stashed inside. Romolo Zeni hired Beelzebub to get in.” Hayato takes a seat and glares miserably at the floor. “Zeni hired a bunch of these magic users too. Tried to kill everyone involved. Can’t throw a stone without hitting someone who wasn’t affected by this shit, I think.”

Shamal snakes a hand through his hair, looking ponderous. Hayato shrivels in on himself. Saying it out loud makes him feel like he should be doing more afterwards, beyond watching movies and letting half of their group vanish into _thin fucking air_.

It’s comforting, at least, to be left with the only competent one of the group, but still, jesus.

“Do you know where he is?”

“Huh?” Hayato blinks.

“Bambino Beelzebub.”

“No, man, he took off with half of Vongola’s shit. They were super pissed about that. Then Squalo shows up—”

“ _Squalo?”_

“I think they told him he could have a grudge match with the kid—”

“Ah.”

“Squalo shows up, threatens Yamamoto, tells the Boss not to join the mafia, and ditches too. Don’t know where he’s at either.”

“You’ve been through a lot.” Shamal folds his arms. Hayato flinches back like it’s a threat. “Who’s Boss?”

“…It’s, uh…” Hayato rubs his arm anxiously. “…I’m tutoring Sawada’s son, is all.”

“Sawada’s _kid?”_ Shamal whips his head around like Tsuna is hiding just around the corner. “Where is he?”

“Left. He, uhm. He’s kinda. Gone missing.”

Shamal stares.

“Fucking tortured genius children. _Every time_ with them.” He scratches his head. “This mess is _almost_ worth wasting a mosquito on a man. Never could have _imagined…_ ”

“You— You know about this, this Flame stuff, right?” Hayato asks suddenly, drawing himself up as best he can. He tries to think of Shamal as an equal instead of the coolest person his nine-year-old self had ever met. Shamal has only gotten more awesome in the years since their last meeting, so it’s kind of hard. “Can you tell me? About all of it? We’re making lists and stuff, but it’s, kinda…”

He gestures to the creased sheets recording what they have so far. Shamal walks over to examine them, and the condescension is clear in his expression. Hayato fixes his jaw and refuses to be intimidated by it. He needs information if they want to use those weapons efficiently, and chances are, Shamal is the only person they can get it from.

“You’ve quit smoking.”

Hayato’s train of thought derails at the complete nonsequitor. “Huh? Uh— yeah, the Sawadas aren’t fans. Boss’ll bat it right off my face if I try lighting up.”

Shamal snorts and drops the sheets back on the bed. “I can’t give you more than a basic definition, but you’re going to get yourself killed going on information that limited.”

It’s not much, but the anticipation feels better than relief.

 

* * *

 

Kyouya awakes with a jolt, expecting to swallow a fog made of knives, but all he inhales is the smell of freshly baked bread and coffee. His instincts are straining at attention, he needs to _move, attack,_ but this is very hard, because he is badly injured, exhausted, disoriented, and holding the hands of his secretary in a wig.

Kyouya does not understand the wig. It is very long. With the makeup, he looks very strange. It must be a disguise. Admission of guilt.

Kyouya moves to grab his tonfas, but the secretary has him in a death vice and all his attempts do is pull at the raw skin on his aching knuckles. His arms feel like noodles.

“What did you do to me,” he says, but the tone is all lilted, and it’s a profound effort to not slur.

“You’re really badly hurt. Did it occur to you that it might be your injuries holding you down?” Says the secretary.

Maybe. “No.”

The secretary’s mouth pulls down in something that looks too strange to be a frown, but Kyouya can only identify about five facial expressions without putting mental energy into it, and he doesn’t have a lot to spare. His head is still spinning, even without closing his eyes. He suspects he may have ruptured his eardrum.

His eyes flick to his surroundings. It’s very warm, and there aren’t very many people. The secretary has placed them somewhere quiet, dark, and away from prying eyes, which means he is not entirely useless. He’s never seen the shop before, and when he looks at a sliver of the outdoors, he can safely say he’s never seen the street, either. This is not Namimori. Very perplexing. He’ll figure it out later.

The seclusion and newfound calm gives him time to even out his breathing and focus on the feeling of the secretary’s cool skin against his too-hot palms. It feels like a cold water bath. The secretary’s presence smothers the heat that had kept him going until now, and normally Kyouya would hate that, but there is really nothing to bite into in this tiny cafe.

And he is very, very sore.

He closes his eyes and breathes deeply.

“Leaving school without permission.”

The secretary jumps.

“Resisting punishment.”

“ _You were trying to kill me?”_

“Placing hands on my person.”

“I wasn’t going to _leave you on the ground_.”

Kyouya opens one eye. The secretary flinches again. There is none of the calm, smooth obedience on his face. He just looks like a herbivore. Very nervous. Kyouya thinks of the definitions of behavioral patterns he’s gotten used to and finds them all empty and uninspired. It takes him a moment to recall Tetsuya’s easy comforts, with a more complex idea to replace it. Yes. Clearly, everyone around him is a swarm of insects, pests, existing only to maintain the cycle of energy.

The secretary is not an insect, nor is he some petty herbivore. He has natural predators, but doesn’t act like it. Kyouya has no idea why he does it. He is openly disrespecting Kyouya. This is not the behaviour of someone who has a sense of self-preservation. There doesn’t seem to be anyone putting him up to it. He’s just rude and Kyouya wants to beat him up.

The secretary doesn’t have a very solid place in Kyouya’s mind, beyond flimsy jokes. At best, a small, annoying little animal. This isn’t particularly troublesome — he has no place for many people — but he’s offended because it means he can’t use structural facts to insult the secretary, and he needs to communicate his distaste somehow, as the secretary currently has his hands pinned in place.

Kyouya kicks him.

“ _Ow!”_ The secretary whines.

That made him feel a little better.

“Some responsible chairman you are. Why did you even come over here? It’s a _school day._ You’re _missing school_ ,” the secretary continues to whine.

“I am ill and unfit for school.”

“When have you ever cared about that?”

“Very frequently. I have the hospital examine me whenever my health is jeopardized.”

The secretary pulls back. “Do you have some sort of chronic illness?”

“Colds. Fever.” The secretary droops. Kyouya doesn’t like this. “…Anything that may hamper performance and spread to others.”

“So you want to look infallible.” The secretary rolls his eyes. Kyouya bristles. “So what hurt you this time?”

“…What.”

“I checked you. You look like you got hit by a truck. A truck with hands.”

“There is no such thing as a truck with hands.”

“You got hit with _hands that have the power of a truck_.”

The secretary is not wrong.

“None of your business.”

“Fine. Then how _I_ got my _magic powers_ is none of your business either.” The secretary rests his chin on the table and glares. His grip on Hibari’s hands does not relax.

“…Magic powers.”

“Obviously. I could never land a hit, whether you were injured or not. I’m _Dame-Tsuna_ , remember?” The secretary lifts his head incrementally. “You’re always at the top of the food chain. There’s no universe where that’s not true.”

Kyouya stares back.

Then he looks at his hands. “Are you using magic powers on me.”

“…Makes you feel better, doesn’t it?” The secretary avoids looking at him straight-on, which is Weakness, and also Guilt.

“Unacceptable. Release me.”

“No.”

“ _Insubordination.”_

“Still no.”

Kyouya struggles, but his arms are numb and the muscles refuse to exert the tension required to lift them. The secretary is clearly absorbing his powers somehow. He uses his legs to lean back and try to pull his arms out, but the secretary is not satisfied in simply using heretofore unknown magic abilities to keep him in place, clutching Kyouya’s hands so tightly that his fingernails bite into his torn knuckles.

Kyouya stops struggling with one leg propped up on the booth seat, dissecting the secretary for weaknesses.

The secretary blinks at him.

Kyouya reverses, using his shoulders and his position to push back, seeking to twist the secretary’s arms until they can no longer maintain the grip. The secretary pushes back, but he has very flimsy arms. Unfortunately, so does Kyouya, and he requires a higher vantage point to properly push down without having them give out.

They are locked in a stalemate of power, each trying to push back against the other, until a waitress arrives.

“I-Is everything alright here?” She asks, herbivorously. Insect, Kyouya internally categorizes.

The secretary immediately stops pushing and slides down into his seat so his arms aren’t wrenched back when Kyouya falls over the table to slam their hands either side of the secretary’s head.

“We’re flirting,” the secretary says in a pitched falsetto.

Kyouya tries to move their hands outwards to continue the effort of twisting them, but the secretary locks his arms in place with his elbows digging into his sides and flutters his eyelashes at the waitress, ignoring Kyouya entirely.

_Insubordination!_

“I…Sorry for interrupting.” She hustles away from them.

The secretary starts kicking Kyouya’s remaining leg to try to get him to retreat, but Kyouya continues trying to pull his arms to the side. He is making good progress, and the secretary has to keep turning his palms to maintain his hold, which in turn gives Kyouya more purchase to push them. The elbows in his side must hurt, which also makes Kyouya happy.

“Stop it!”

“ _Won’t.”_

The secretary shoves his upper body forward and struggles to sit his elbows on the back of the seat rather than his own sides, so Kyouya can no longer twist them properly. Then he pushes _hard_ , which Kyouya should be able to easily take as a chance to completely throw him off, but then he yanks Kyouya’s hands inward so their arms criss-cross and then slams _down_.

The pain is so blinding his vision tunnels.

“If I let go of you, three things will probably happen,” the secretary announces as Kyouya hits the table. “One, you get worked up again and try to kill me. I don’t want that. Obviously. Two, you take off, and try to beat someone else, probably injuring yourself as a result. I also don’t want that. Three, you do both. Definitely don’t want that. So if I let go, both of us get hurt. Least desirable outcome. If I keep holding on, you can learn more about magic powers, and, I dunno, our hands get kinda sweaty.”

Kyouya narrows his eyes.

The secretary frowns, more naturally this time. “…It’s not insubordination to want to not die.”

“…Do you accept punishment that is not a threat to your long-term safety?” Kyouya grits.

The secretary completely undercuts his theoretical lack of insubordination by shrugging. “I dunno, I guess.”

Kyouya is very, very tired.

“…Acceptable terms.”

“Yaaaaaaay,” the secretary says in perfect, unaccented monotone, and sits down. “We should order something. Here, I’ll move my hands with you so you can flip through the menu.”

 


	30. The Recovery Of Ability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've created a [website](http://detsuna.weebly.com/). See: character pages! Updated Flame Lore page! An illustrated map! Chapter summaries! All kinds of fun stuff.

“Example A,” Tsuna announces, “latent healing magics.”

They’ve relocated to a secluded corner of the forest trail, half because Hibari is jumpier around other human beings and half because he doesn’t want anyone to spot what they’re doing. Tsuna has relinquished one of Hibari’s hands so they can walk around without looking like buffoons, and they’re crouched in some bushes, surrounded by the wanton destruction left from yesterday morning’s little apocalypse.

Tsuna has ‘borrowed’ (stole) a steak knife from his second lunch, and is now using it in his newest experiment. It looks sharp. He hopes it is. Tearing his skin with a pointed necklace hurt like nothing else.

Hibari watches dispassionately as Tsuna drives the steak knife into the back of his hand, and doesn’t really react to Tsuna dropping his head to the ground and screaming. It hurts pretty much exactly as much as the necklace did, god _dammit_. If only he stabbed somewhere that _wasn’t his hand_.

Tsuna sucks in a ragged breath and whites out with incredible ease, what with the horrible injury tearing apart all conscious thought.

The Ashes begin to rise. Hibari’s eyes widen in interest. Tsuna sniffles up his dribbling nose and concentrates on the pattern of the Ashes. They are very…bubbly, but also heavy. Like boiling water, that is somehow regurgitating specks of ash.

“Cold,” says Hibari.

“What?”

“Your hand is colder.”

“Oh. I, uh, guess it would be. Someone who knows more about this stuff than I do said that it sucks up energy, or something…”

Hibari adjusts his fingers under Tsuna’s hands. They were burning hot at first, but have cooled off a little since the cafe. “Hard to move my arms.”

“Yes, that was the idea?” The wound starts pulling inwards. Hibari observes the whirlpool intently, resting their joined hands on his knee so he can examine it in detail.

“Unnatural. Does anyone else have magic powers?”

“Not this, specifically. I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t a magic disability…” The suction cuts out, and the skin _pops_ back into place with the usual poof of grey.

It feels like getting stabbed a second time.

“ _UUUGHGHAGH!”_ Tsuna howls, and bites his tongue at the sudden agony of it. He lets go of Hibari’s hand, fully extending his fingers with a trembling tension. Hibari slides it out from underneath, looks mildly perturbed by the convulsing limb on his leg, and decides to press his hand on top of Tsuna’s instead.

The spike goes white-hot, and then vanishes entirely, leaving Tsuna sprawled on the dirt, breathing heavily, and probably ruining his makeup with his tears. His whole arm is too weak to even think about gripping anything, so it just sits limply on Hibari’s lap.

“Useless,” Hibari snorts. “Tell me about the other powers.”

“The others…” Tsuna flips over so he’s lying on his back. His healed hand feels numb. So did his arm and his face, but the difference is that it means he can’t control his fingers at all. Hibari places his palm on Tsuna’s other hand. Weirdly obedient for him, but then again, he probably doesn’t want to be a rampaging homicidal angel of destruction either. He enjoys precision in his murderous compulsions. A fugue state is useless to him.

Speaking of which.

“What happened to you? You’re acting weird,” Tsuna asks.

Hibari regards him for a moment.

Then he takes all of Tsuna’s fingers and pushes them back until Tsuna squeals. “Answer the question.”

“Owowowowow! I should be allowed to ask at least that much! You destroyed a park bench and impaled my arms with splinters! That’s not something normal people can do! Why are you drilling me on powers when you can do stuff like that?”

“I don’t have magic powers,” Hibari says deliberately.

“That’s what _I_ would have told _you_ a few hours ago, but look at me now! And it’s something I could always do, kind of! I mean…my recovery speed was—”

“Shut up,” Hibari says. Tsuna’s mouth snaps closed. “What are the powers. How do they happen.”

“I don’t know! They’re like…” He makes a dissatisfied little noise. “Hayato says it’s a conspiracy. That the mafia have been hiding it, and grooming kids that show signs of it. But there’s this ruin, down there, with some sort of activation battery, and pretty much _everyone_ had _something_. Except Hacchan. I think it’s just a regular human thing? And you need some sort of conduit. We have a few of them stashed on the hotel roof. Takeshi’s sword glows.”

“I want to see them.” Hibari stands and impatiently tugs at Tsuna’s hand. “Show me.”

“Wh— the hotel is _over ten storeys!_ How would we even get up there?”

“What town are we in?”

Tsuna blinks. “Uh…huh?”

“ _Where are we?”_ Hibari grits, visibly frustrated now.

“M-Miyazawa.”

“Hmm. We own…” He looks at the sky in thought. “…approximately one third. I should be able to take it.”

“ _What?_ But what about me? They’re _looking_ for me!” Tsuna’s hands flail around in his desperation. “How can I go back to their _base of operations?”_

Hibari snatches Tsuna’s hand out of the air and clutches it so tight he cricks the joint in Tsuna’s index finger. “You’re already in disguise. Slather more colour on your face if you don’t think you can do it. _And then show me.”_

Then he drops their hands, holds them together properly with their fingers laced, and waits.

Right. Doesn’t know where the hotel is. Doesn’t know where anything is. Including the town he’s in.

“…What’s the last thing you remember?”

Hibari gives him a blank look.

“…Being at home, two days ago.”

Tsuna reflects Hibari’s blank look back at him.

Then he takes out his phone and calls Kusakabe.

Hibari keeps tugging at him while it’s ringing, so Tsuna gives up and starts heading back towards the hotel. Like a child in a grocery store. Tsuna has never had anything Hibari wanted before, and he finds the experience very unpleasant. Well, maybe he had the fun of trying to play hit-the-secretary. That was also unpleasant.

Tsuna has to call two times for it to connect. When it does, he hears the homey sound of clattering dishes and something boiling.

“… _Sawada,”_ Kusakabe says carefully.

“Hi,” says Tsuna.

Kusakabe lets out a sigh of relief. _“I’ve been trying to call you. Where were you?”_

“Sorry. Got chatted up by a baby. And my dog.”

“You have a dog?” Hibari asks, immediately alert.

“Yeah, I tied it down in the park just in case you tried attacking again because it likes your aura of immanent murder so much. We can go get it now. Kusakabe-senpai, what’s wrong with Hibari-san?”

“ _You’re…you’re with him right now?”_

“Yeah. He tried to kill me. And now he’s taken me hostage so we can go to a hotel on a mission of subterfuge and international conspiracy.” Hibari has changed directions. “And also to go look at my dog.”

“ _You…you have a dog.”_

“An assassin baby gave it to me. A lot happened.”

Hibari perks up again. “Baby.”

Christ. “Yeah. It had a hood and a giant magic purple pacifier and called me an abomination.”

“You’re not interesting enough to be called an abomination.” They emerge from the trail. “Where’s the dog.”

“Kusakabe-senpai, _why is Hibari-san here?_ What’s wrong with him? He looks terrible! He won’t answer my questions! And I think he’s going to steal my dog! I just got it like, an hour ago? I love my dog! My mom’s going to buy kibble!”

“ _He was attending…survival training.”_

“He says he doesn’t remember the past _two days._ He has _handprint bruises.”_

Hibari lets go of Tsuna’s hand and wanders over to Hatachi, who is absolutely losing its fucking mind in Hibari’s presence. Hibari unties it from the tree, and lets it lick his face. Tsuna stares, not really sure how to feel about this. Hibari doesn’t particularly strike him as an animal person, but it makes sense. Hibari hates people. Animals are not people. Therefore, animals can’t be all that bad.

Hibari scoops the dog up and holds his hand out, not acknowledging its soppy affectionate licks in any way. “Hotel.”

“Kusakabe-senpai?”

“ _I don’t know how he managed to unwind by the time he got to you, but keep him distracted. And get him to bed somehow, he hasn’t slept in 3 days.”_ Pause. Inaudible talking. _“…And tell him my mom says hello.”_

“Kusakabe-senpai’s mom says hi,” Tsuna says, grabbing Hibari’s hand again.

“I’ll be back tonight,” Hibari replies.

“ _Mom, Kyouya says he’ll be back tonight! Can you call dad?”_ Kusakabe calls away from the receiver. Then, to Tsuna, _“I’m really sorry about this.”_

“No, I mean…whatever. Better than getting beat up for…basically everything I’ve been doing.”

“ _To be honest, I was expecting worse.”_

“Oh no. It was bad. He destroyed a park bench.” Tsuna points out said bench to Hibari, who, to his credit, looks genuinely contrite. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to serve him as needed.”

“…I want to be back home by tonight, so hurry up. You can talk and walk, can’t you?” Hibari growls. The effect is mitigated by Hatashi perching its tiny little muzzle on Hibari’s shoulder and giving him puppy dog eyes.

“I was hanging up anyway. Bye, Kusakabe-senpai!”Tsuna says with a slightly spiteful shout.

“ _See you. Thanks for this.”_ Kusakabe hangs up, leaving Tsuna no choice but to walk Hibari back to the hotel and trying not to sweat every time someone looks their way.

Outings with Hibari are horrible, and the next time he’s forced to have one, he’s going to refuse outright. He will jump out of _even more windows_ if he has to. He will master his escape artist talents. He will fight god if it means never spending time alone with Hibari again. He is literally so exhausted by Hibari’s presence that he can’t scrounge up the effort to be shocked at his weird focal interest in Tsuna’s dog. Normally that kind of thing would have Tsuna setting up conspiracy corkboards in his head with Hayato-esque reverence. Right now, it just _is_. Sure. Pretty much makes sense. Moving on.

Tsuna sees Mammon arguing with someone in front of the hotel. The pacifier is either gone or hidden. The baby makes an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture when they see Tsuna and Hibari coming over.

“Baby,” Tsuna points out.

Hibari looks at Mammon, who has lost interest in them. “Hmm. Don’t know that one.”

“Do you…do you know any _other_ assassin babies…?”

“…Nnn.”

God does Tsuna regret all kinds of everything right now.

 

* * *

 

“ _And then he started stabbing a guy in the head!”_

Fuyumi brings her shaking cup of coffee to her lips. The coffee is probably the only thing powering her at the moment. The rest of her is slack and sprawled out over her couch.

“Did he.”

“ _He did it to protect Hana-chan, isn’t that so heroic? So, like, then, this assassin squad captain guy shows up, because he wants to kill the vine boy, and then he like, tells Sawada-kun that he isn’t allowed to join the mafia. And he went down underground to find Yamamoto-kun and save him I think? But the vine boy was gone! So he left. But Yamamoto-kun took the sword with him!”_

“ _That so.”_

“ _So they got escorted back and then Hana-chan snuck downstairs to go talk to Shouichi-kun, and they stayed up all night using magic equipment, and the officer people had to bring me along to help check for Sawada-kun, because he’s gone missing! Like, he had to take the same route as Hana-chan, I think? But his rib’s broken, so that had to hurt. And now Hana is playing with your taser because it works the same way, or something. And that’s it!”_

Fuyumi places the mug on the side table. “Haru-chan, why don’t you come home now?”

“ _Can’t. Haru must watch over Hana-chan and Shouichi-kun! They said I’ll be able to leave this afternoon, though, so I’ll come home for dinner. You should come home too!”_

“Mm. Listen, Harucchi! Make sure to leave as soon as you can. I have to go now. Have fun with your friends!”

“’ _Kay!”_

Fuyumi is going to have some _words_.

It takes a while to recover, but she does so with great violence, yanking on her jacket and bringing at least one of each weapon range. It’s sad she gave her taser to Haru, but from the sounds of things, she _clearly_ needs it more than Fuyumi does. She also needs friends. It’s nice her and Hana are getting along.

Fuyumi takes the motorcycle, a big, black, dangerous-looking thing that would be at home amongst the American motor gangs. Motorbikes run awkwardly on the trails between Namimori and the north sectors, and she doesn’t own a good dirtbike.

There seems to be a pitiful amount of people on watch, both in regards to the yakuza and the Authority’s little hellion. Once they realize she isn’t heading south, they pretty much ignore her, too. What the hell is even going on, anymore? Fuyumi doesn’t know. She thought she was digging up a case of infighting. How wrong she was. How foolish.

The residents of Hakuyou don’t pay her much mind when she drives in; she’s a frequent visitor, since the Kouyou family is literally the only group left who will hire her out. Everyone else is all jumpy about her thieving ways, but telling people all about their methods is part of the Akiyama-kai’s indoctrination process. Granted, they haven’t used their mind control on her, but they have an understanding.

She pulls up outside of the gate, and is walked to a side entrance, where there’s a carpark to stash the bike. Then she runs out to the front again. Sucks they don’t have a vehicle entrance right by the door. Why bother having a bajillion metres of lawn if you can’t walk a motorcycle through it?

No one pays her much mind, assuming she’s here for a meeting. It wouldn’t matter even if she wasn’t; Naoki is used to receiving her, because the Akiyama-kai boss doesn’t like her and will take any opportunity to avoid her. Fuyumi thinks it’s because she reminds him of the youngest Kouyou. Naoki is basically her only contact in the Akiyama-kai. Fuyumi thinks it’s because she reminds him of the youngest Kouyou.

God does this family ever have a lot of baggage.

The beachglass construct that sits on the shore stands razor-sharp and glinting in the distance far past the walls of the compound, the tips only visible in the way they catch the sun. Fuyumi likes watching the edges rise as she climbs up the incline. Peaking horrors.

She’s so occupied by the sight that she doesn’t see that the Kouyou compound has guests.

“What do you need student ID for? Can’t you recognize your own family?” The accent is what catches her attention first; it’s the thick European lilt of Japanese taught in Italian classes, with the rough over-accentuating of the uneducated street types living off the fantasy of getting on a boat to Japan and living it big here instead of breaking their back under South Italian Blackmarket syndicates. Japanese is simple enough that he’s perfectly understandable, but it’s a huge tell.

“Why don’t you take the bandages off, to confirm?” The guard says suspiciously.

“I can’t. That’s why I’m _here_.” And that’s a kid, a little rake of a thing, only just taller than average but thin as a stick. His voice is trembling. He looks like he’s about to cry.

“We don’t have any record of anyone else with the Guiding Eyes! I think we’d know about a _second heir to the family.”_

“Be— because my mom _left you!_ If you just…just ask him, ask Uncle Naoki—”

Holy shit!

“You’re Junko’s boy! The prodigal nephew!” Fuyumi shrieks.

The boy whips around. His eyes are, in fact, bandaged, right over his eyebrows, so she can’t read an expression off him. The ties dangle down to rest on his shoulders. He’s got a cane and a seeing-eye Italian and everything. The Italian is _really_ good-looking, but the overall aesthetic is marred by the fact he’s wearing Ryuuga’s baggy-as-hell painting shirt and jeans that completely obscure his muscles, and Miki is wearing a faded red T-shirt declaring ‘DANCE PARTY 2000’ in bold yellow letters and socks with strap sandals. Socks and thong sandals is Japanese post-modern aestheticism. Socks and strap sandals is a thing only tourists and Northerners do.

“…Who…?”

Fuyumi strikes a pose even though Oogawa Miki is effectively blind at the moment. “I’m one of the Akiyama’s contractors. I gave you some neat tools when your mom broke her leg, remember?”

“Oh…You…you’re the one who makes all the equipment in Namimori.” Miki scratches at the bandages. “I didn’t know you worked for the group.”

“It’s a living. Is Naoki-kun in there? I have to ask him questions. Many questions.” She pauses. “Oh, better yet, you were there, weren’t you?”

“I was…I was where?”

“I’m also Hana-chan and Shouichi-kun’s mentor, remembeeeer?”

“Irie-san said you’re a criminal,” Miki replies without missing a beat. His seeing-eye Italian immediately jumps to stand between him and Fuyumi. Good dog. Fuyumi leans back with her hands on her hips.

“ _Nyorohoho!_ What big mouths they’ve got! The Akiyama are a _crime ring_ , though, so it’s not a big deal, riiiiight?”

“I don’t know. I guess. Are you here to yell at him?” He looks slightly hopeful about this possibility.

“Yes! Haru-chan told me every~ little~ thing~ and it’ll help if you’re there. I want him to feel _really really_ bad about himself, since his pops is still in Tokyo where I can’t give him hell. What are you in for?”

Miki pushes his bandages up with a little effort, revealing his eyes. His glowing eyes. His glowing marigold eyes. Fuyumi can feel her own Flames flare up like static in her core when their gazes meet. If she weren’t an Internal type, it would have probably caused a visual reaction. It’s _nothing_ like Naoki’s warm, fluid hand tightening around the soul. Miki’s not a Sky Primary. Which is _weird._ Fuyumi thought if you had a Sky, it had to be your core Flame aspect, end of story. Shows what she knows about all this Flame junk.

“…Huh.”

He fixes the strips back in place. “They…They won’t turn off. I told a mafia man to get away from me and he jumped out a window. I turned Ben into a mind slave by accident. I wanted to ask…to ask Uncle Naoki if he can help me. T-To make it go away?”

Fuyumi turns to the guard. “That’s proof, right?”

“Proof of _Mist illusions,_ I’m sure,” the guard sniffs.

“ …Wow! Talk about a pest! Tell him to get out of here, kid.”

“I’m not sure I should use my eyes any—”

“Boring! _Bzhooooo._ ” Fuyumi yanks Miki’s head back and tears the bandages from his eyes.

“ _H-Hey!”_

“Tell him what to do, kid! Take control of your life!”

The seeing-eye Italian grabs Fuyumi by the wrists and walks her backwards. “That’s quite enough of that.”

“You’re the secondary heir! T _hat makes you the boss of them!”_

Miki glances back at them, and Fuyumi shivers first when her own Lightning Flames flare, and then again when she can feel the prickling golden heat of the seeing-eye Italian’s Sun signature. “ _Man_ that’s a hit.”

“I-I mean…I guess…?” The boy’s lip trembles cutely, and he bites down on it. Then he refocuses on the guard. Doesn’t say anything, which is disappointing, but the guard is a Projector, and thus lights up like a christmas tree with glittery sun Flames that glow like a real fire when they make eye contact. Whatever the guy thinks Mist Flames can do, he obviously understands that _this is not it._

“T-Terribly sorry, sir! I’ll get master Naoki right away!” The guard squeaks, and barrels into the building.

Miki adjusts the bandages back over his eyes. “…I wish I didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s only for now,” says the Italian. “When you talk to your uncle…”

“By the way, who’s this guy?” Fuyumi shakes her wrists out of his big, strong hands and whirls to face him. “Can’t say I like my cute student’s friends hanging out with big scary foreigners!”

“We’re not friends,” Miki mumbles.

“I’m his bodyguard. They cleared me to hover around him. Name’s Benedetto.”

“Ben! He turned you into a mind slave? How did _that_ feel?”

“Terrifying. He now has someone just as scared of those eyes as he is. It gives him a sense of proportion.”

“Goodness. Y’know, hearing Junko’s boy has a power like this makes me wonder how the other kids fared! I heard _everybody_ went Flame Active, and I mean _everybody_.”

“They were. I think it was…I mean, the ruin is huge, it couldn’t activate with one person’s energy. Even our family’s tombs have to be lit individually. It used a battery to amplify it all. And I…” Miki clutches his arm uncomfortably. “…I activated it.”

“What? But if it’s an Aura-powered building, it should activate by itself. It wouldn’t open otherwise.”

Miki’s cheeks redden. “It…It did. And then. Kept going.”

Well, that explains why everyone started spitting Flames out their ass, now doesn’t it?

“Good boy, almost single-handedly violating the Omerta.”

“Oh my god, _really?”_ Miki whips his head up in a panic. “Grandpa says the Vindice don’t come to Japan!”

“Gramps is a _filthy filthy liar!_ Japan and Italy just have different rulesets about revealing things to the public! It’s way more relaxed in Japan, that’s why it’s so popular with retirees. The Vindice just can’t sum up the energy to care about some backwater island supereconomy.”

Miki looks like he’s about to cry again.

“What’s the Vindice,” Ben whispers.

“Mafia bounty hunters,” Fuyumi whispers back. “They have their own jail for the big baddies. They kill people sometimes. Kind of a big deal. They can teleport. Chains are involved.”

“What? _Seriously?_ We have this sinner’s curse in the Blackmarket — we thought it was just that bad stuff happened to you if you did too much crime without a Famiglia, no one said anything about it being actual _people_.”

“Oh no, I got arrested by those guys once! Totally real.”

“You _what,”_ Miki wails.

“Oooh, okay, so, I’m wanted pretty much everywhere forever because I _loooove_ technology. Even if I’m not allowed to touch it! So I had stolen a blueprint for just about the coolest gun ever, and as it turns out, that gun also required a violation of human rights to create! So these two families sent out a creed declaring all iterations of it illegal contraband — and illegal by _mafia_ standards — that must be destroyed, which _I_ didn’t know because I was investigating Australian wildlife for possible poisons. So I was chatting up this cute native guy in Perth, talking about my human rights-violating blueprints and how humanity could be the weirdest sometimes, and then suddenly, the Vindice come out of this dimensional hellportal — don’t ask me what Flames they were using, I _do not know,_ and I _want some_ — and were like, ‘you’re under arrest’!” She gives the pair her best jazz hands. “They thought I was one of the developers, which, no, I only do contracts for a _reason_. Anyway, they put me in normal people jail once they were sure I was just a normal thieving scumbag and there I sat until a friend bailed me out. When I told him the Vindice got me he made me move back home and never leave Namimori ever.”

“Good friend,” says Ben.

“ _Annoying_ friend. He’s done worse, and _he_ doesn’t have to move back home forever. I mean, he banished himself to some island, but it’s whatever.”

“But why didn’t they arrest _Zeni?”_

God, Zeni. Just hearing his name makes Fuyumi want to rip that gramps a new one. Naoki is becoming less and less appealing, because it occurs to her he might be just as upset. “Because Zeni wasn’t breaking any rules? He came as an archaeologist with Blackmarket mercenaries. The worst he could have done would be to piss off the Difo, and unless he actually killed the Difo leader, the Vindice wouldn’t care if he wiped out every last one of them. Inter-boss conflicts is where it’s at. He could probably get in shit with the Vongola, but again, in this political sector, he’d be messing with a branch that isn’t even technically mafia, so _again_ , not worth their divine intervention. There are other kinds of internal policing, y’know.”

“You’re really good at making the mafia sound unappealing,” Ben mutters.

“Nyorohohohohoho! Makes y’wanna stick around protecting squishy little middle-schoolers, doesn’t it?”

Ben opens his mouth, but is interrupted by the flute-like dulcet tones of the man of the house. _“What are you telling him?_ Away, you foul harpy!”

“ _Naocchi!”_ Fuyumi waves.

“Shut up, don’t speak, get away from my nephew.” Naoki is dressed in full traditional wear, his vintage old-school aesthetic worn as comfortably as pajamas. His haori billows as he tries to bat Fuyumi away. The speed required to get between them has made his perfect curtain of cherry-bright hair slightly frizzy, which is very satisfying to look at. “What has she been filling your head with?”

“Anecdotes about the Vindice. Did you know she got arrested by them once?” Ben asks, seemingly unperturbed by a crime lord in full traditional dress flying out of the house like a ruffled and very irritated bird of prey.

“Yes, which is why we’ve bound her here, where she can’t get in trouble. Which she _clearly_ took as some sort of challenge.” Naoki gives her a filthy look that doesn’t match the poise in his tone.

“Sure is wonderful I can’t get in trouble here, in Namimori. Would be awful if I were allowed to go to Miyazawa. Heard there was _lots_ of trouble over there.”

“That’s none of your— Miki.” Naoki finally notices the bandages. He clutches his nephew’s head in a panic. “What happened! Are you injured? What did they do to you?”

“Nothing…the facemasks just weren’t working.” Miki works the already-loose bandages off his eyes again, revealing his glowing and now very damp eyes. “I can’t make it stop. They’re stuck like this.”

“Oh…Oh, Miki…” Naoki runs a reverent hand over Miki’s face, and then flinches, _violently_. The atmosphere does something horrifying and over-tense, like two discordant notes on a piano, resonating forever. It makes Fuyumi’s head ache, and her Flames do something funky they probably shouldn’t be doing.

“It’s a Projecting ability…” Naoki hums like existence itself isn’t vibrating with a mismatched glue brands. “This is troubling. I hadn’t realized you had such a perfect model of it.”

“ _Reality is dying, Naoki!_ ” Fuyumi wails.

“Hm. I know you’d rather I junk it, but the eyes wouldn’t survive the suppression. Give me a moment.” Naoki presses his thumbs on Miki’s forehead, and they glow a steady orange. Nothing about Miki changes, but the atmosphere resettles. “There. Doesn’t it feel better? A kind harmony, isn’t it?”

“Huh…?” Miki slurs.

“It was because we’re both Sky aspects that _project_ our Auras. We weren’t projecting on the same… _frequency_ , I should call it. It’s completely harmless, but immensely unpleasant to experience. Careful adjusting helps with this next step, though. Now, pay attention to my energy, in my thumbs. Concentrate on that. Here we go…” Another flare of orange, and Miki takes a steadying breath. The glow of his eyes dim until they’re back to their original burnt umber colour.

Miki lets out a soft whine at the loss, then a hiccup, and then another, until fat streams of tears start rolling down his cheeks. Relief floods off him in waves. Fuyumi has never had her Flames active longer than four seconds, so she has no idea what constantly pouring them out must feel like. Probably awful.

“So…the yakuza is wizards too, huh?” Ben mutters.

Naoki whirls on Ben with an acid fury. “And _who_ are _you_.”

“Name’s Benedetto. I’m his bodyguard. I’m here to protect him while you aren’t around to use your harmony-sky bullshit.” Ben straightens and looks thoroughly unimpressed at Naoki, which is admirable for a common street thug to do in front of a yakuza heir.

“Oh? And would you happen to be one of those Italian men I’ve heard are _infesting_ Miyazawa, attempting to _kill_ our school’s students and our family’s branches?” Naoki grits, almost breaking his perfectly composed speaking tone.

“Oh yeah, plenty of those still running around,” Fuyumi sings, waving a hand back and forth. “Everyone’s really sweating it out down in good old Miyazawa, especially when _half those kids have gone pure Flame-active_ because _Romolo Zeni was there,_ and _Sawada-san’s son’s gone missing._ ”

Fuyumi was right. This wasn’t as satisfying as railing into Naoki’s father would have been.

Still.

“ **WHO THE _FUCK_ IS IN CHARGE OF THE MIYAZAWA BRANCH!?”**

Kind of amazing anyway.

 

* * *

 

Hibari strides into the hotel like he owns it, which makes sense because the next words out of his mouth are “I’m taking possession of this hotel.”

Several people in suits and T-shirts turn to look at them. Tsuna desperately wishes he had bought a compact mirror so he could check his makeup. He used waterproof mascara, but can he _really_ be sure it was all it boasted?

He clings to Hibari’s arm to look more soft and girly and like an innocent girlfriend, and hides his face in the fabric. The hoodie smells like laundry detergent and grass, the kind of smell that happens when Tsuna’s mom air-dries their clothes in summer.

Hibari doesn’t appear to care, and probably thinks Tsuna is just increasing suction power. Hibari doesn’t care about anything but Justice and Power, it seems. He looks down upon the people of the hotel with holy judgment. “Leave. Now.”

“What?” One of the suited men exclaims. “You can’t just—”

“You no longer have permission to stay here. Leave. _Now.”_ He’s radiating doom so forcefully Tsuna can almost hear the sound effects. _Gogogogogogo._

“On what authority?”

Hibari tilts his chin up imperiously, and his grip tightens on Tsuna’s hand. He can hear another finger crick. This one is less painful, and alleviates some of the stiffness in his joints. “I am Hibari Kyouya.”

That doesn’t get a reaction. Tsuna presumes Hibari is really rich and expecting recognition for it. He never would have been able to get away with all the shit he does otherwise. In the background, in the corner of his eye, there’s some sort of bustle coming from the restaurant that makes the back of Tsuna’s mind _scream, nononono._

Hibari’s jaw tightens. “…I’m the inheritor to Misosazai’s Authority.”

Tsuna has never seen someone face go _that_ white _that_ quickly. Especially since Tsuna has never heard of wrens being known as anything except fat tiny birds.

The commotion breaks into the lobby. The man they’re talking to _flees,_ shrieking a harried explanation right out the door.

“That’s…not a ‘meeting a rich person’ reaction.”

“I am also rich,” Hibari says cryptically.

The commotion is a group of three, making a beeline right for them. Tsuna feels shocks of horror hit up his spine like hammers. He can’t even _see,_ but he feels like he’s _dying_. The air is baking him alive. He can’t breathe. He can’t _breathe._

Sawada Iemitsu stops in front of Hibari and stares him down with an expression Tsuna’s only ever seen in a mirror.

Hibari adjusts his grip on Tsuna’s hand. Tsuna clutches back and tries not to shake so badly. He’s a nervous civilian girlfriend, no one to pay attention. _Smooth it over_.

“Did you not hear me?” Hibari asks, quirking his head a little. His hand feels hotter; Tsuna must have gone Dark again. He wishes he knew a better way to do that.

“Misosazai’s heir, is it?” Tsuna’s dad asks, hands in pockets, looking like a cold, unfeeling monolith radiating power that crawls down Tsuna’s throat and settles in his stomach. The soft, easy warmth he used to glow with when he came home is gone. When Tsuna thinks of his dad, he thinks of wet, mushy kisses, naps in the sitting room, and outings in the wilderness while he spins tales of his adventures, never clear if he’s making it up or if he’s being subtle about the mafia missions that caused them. When Tsuna thinks of how strong he is, it’s structured around how easily his dad can lift him, throw him into the air, even move the furniture for mom single-handedly. Sawada Iemitsu is a foundational pillar in Tsuna’s mind.

The man in front of him is something cold and sharp and bitter, and when he looks at him, all Tsuna sees is someone willing to crush him under his heel. The back of his head is prickling, his nervous system iced over and ringing so cold he can’t even think.

He’s scared.

“This hotel sits on my property, doesn’t it? If you want to investigate anything, you’re free to use the other two thirds of the town. It isn’t as if you don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“I have business here.”

Hibari narrows his eyes. “Not anymore.”

Hatachi barks.

Tsuna’s dad’s eyes flick down. “That’s our dog.”

“It’s my dog.” Hibari even smiles condescendingly at the group, and the dog licks his face as if to accentuate his point. Hibari’s shit-eating grin is way better than Tsuna ever thought he could pull off. He supposes cockiness comes with the arrogance and entitlement. Hibari _seems_ like a cold, distant ruler, but he hasn’t really acted one in most of the time Tsuna’s known him. He smiles a lot more than expected.

“We don’t have any record of you anywhere, beyond a name.” His dad’s eyes flick up and down in an obvious once-over. Tsuna’s skin tingles, but they don’t flick to Tsuna’s face. “Can’t say I’m impressed.”

Hibari’s hand is on _fire_.

Tsuna flinches at the flare, like hot coals against his skin, but he clenches his jaw and clutches the arm tighter. The heat is even radiating through the clothes, scorching the part of his face that had gone _pop_ when Hibari was out to kill him. Tears bead at his eyes at the stinging sensation crawling up his side, but he’s too committed to his disguise to relent. He’s sure that if he lets go, Hibari’s going straight back into that fugue state, and Tsuna’s relationship with his dad isn’t complicated enough to let them battle to the death.

“Hey, hey, Hibacchi,” Tsuna says in a lilt as close to Hana’s when talking about cute celebrities as he can get it, and tries not to melt into a puddle of shame and miserable at calling Hibari a nickname that cute, “Can’t you leave it? I want to go home~ These guys are scary~”

Hibari turns his loathsome look onto Tsuna. “I want to see—”

“Everyone’s gonna go home by tomorrow or something, right?” Tsuna’s grip tightens. The pain is making him light-headed. Hibari’s hand doesn’t look any different, but he feels like he’s made of burning wood. “It’s only Wednesday, today, isn’t it? Even if you can’t see everything tomorrow, maybe like, on Friday?”

Hibari turns to look at Tsuna full on with a dubious expression on his face. Tsuna isn’t entirely sure he realizes Tsuna is acting.

“…Tonight.”

“Eeehh? Stingy.” Tsuna puffs his cheeks out. Hibari’s expression is taking on the slightest edge of bewilderment. His eyes flick around for a moment, like he’s trying to process an extremely complex problem. Then he just looks at Tsuna with mild, slightly disgusted annoyance. Okay, good, he _does_ know Tsuna is acting. And he thinks it’s dumb. Okay. Not like Hibari is doing himself any favours. Tsuna is only trying to get them out of messing with the mafia, but _whatever,_ right? Tsuna wishes Hayato was here to do something loud yet somehow beneficial.

“I still want you out. Leave.” Hibari says. _After all Tsuna has done for him._

Tsuna’s dad stares him down, hard and unyielding. His mom always says he looks just like his father, and he’s starting to see how.

His eyes flick to Tsuna. Tsuna keeps his cheeks puffed and looks away. His heart may be seizing up, now. And fuck holding onto Hibari _hurts_. He can smell cooking meat, which is worrisome.

“…No point getting into even more trouble,” he finally says, turning on the heel of his impeccably shiny shoes. He holds his fingers to his ear and says something inaudible, and suddenly people in suits and T-shirts come flooding into the lobby, pouring out like a swarm of lemmings.

Even when no one is looking, Tsuna refuses to move until every last one of them is gone. Hibari stands as still as a statue, seething, and only relaxing to let Hatachi jump out of his arms. Must be a little too hot for the dog, even with the fur.

Finally, when it’s obvious that no one else is coming, Tsuna relinquishes Hibari’s arm and presses his hand against his neck instead. It’s even hotter, and it sends shocks of pain through Tsuna’s arm, but he keeps it there.

“Why do you want to look at the conduits,” Tsuna mutters. “You don’t even need one.”

“…Do I not?” Hibari is glaring over Tsuna’s shoulder.

“I told you, you’re stronger in every universe. And this _hurts_. Hold still.” Tsuna’s too panicked to properly smooth over like he usually does. He holds his breath and tries to imagine blankness. Cold. Giving up on everything. His dad. His future. His willingness to be distracted by Hibari. _Desolation_.

He can feel his own fingers cool, and Hibari sucks in a tight breath through his nose. There’s a flush on his cheeks, Tsuna notes, not quite a blush, but more colour than usual. It slowly dissipates as Tsuna breaks his willpower down into nothing. H _e doesn’t have any goals, anything to focus on. He’s nothing. He isn’t worth anything at all except his benefit to others._ The burning sensation abates, and Hibari lets out a slow, relaxed breath, almost a sigh. His eyes close and he tilts his head back. Whatever was burning him up, he clearly didn’t like it either.

Tsuna’s eyes trace the outline of his throat, the edges of his jaw, and the way his hair curls delicately around his ears, glowing slightly gold in the light of the lobby. His exposed throat is an tapestry of bruising, with that one set of handprints around the throat sitting like drops of ink along the pale expanse of his skin, speckled with tiny pores, the thumbprint so much larger than Tsuna’s own. There’s a strange calmness to the moment, and Tsuna thinks he can feel it, the way the coolness of his own oblivion is seeping in like an AC on a hot summer’s day.

For the first time, Tsuna finds his issue less of an oddity that’s been plaguing him for years and more of a power he has control over. An ability, a real one, that makes him more useful than other people. Despite how cold he feels, it ignites something warm and content in his stomach. He hadn’t been unleashed in the ruin. He received something. An actual structured _power_. This is something that _belongs to him_. Not the easy tolerance of not being treated badly, or the fun of not getting beaten into the carpet by his boss, but something that makes him _better_.

Hibari opens his eyes to regard Tsuna from above the sharpness of his cheekbones. Tsuna blinks back at him. “…Alright?”

“…Tired.”

Tsuna lets go of him. After some deliberation, he releases his hand, too. “…I wasn’t lying, though. I really do want to go home.”

“What happened here? Why are there mafia in this town?” Hibari’s tone is more business-like now that he’s calmed down. He’s also totally ignoring Tsuna. What an asshole.

Tsuna adjusts his wig nervously. “…The local yakuza were hired to distract people while this archaeologist guy trespassed on Vongola territory. He was looking to steal some of the stuff in that ruin that activated everyone’s abilities.”

“Hm.” Hibari cranes his neck left and right. He looks at the dog. “What did you name it?”

“Eh? Oh— Hatachi.”

“…We’ll come back tonight, after I’ve reviewed the incident.”

“R-Reviewed?”

Hibari pulls his tonfas from his pockets, and flicks them so they extend to full size. Tsuna jumps back. “I want to bite those disobedient insects to death.”

Tsuna watches him in disbelief as he storms out of the building, out for blood, trailing Hatachi as he goes. On one hand, Tsuna ended up not having to confront his dad, the people who work with his dad, or any of his friends. On the other, he has to spend the rest of the day with _Hibari_. Maybe he’ll luck out and everyone will leave by the time they get back.

He looks at his hand. It’s red and irritated, and it hurts to move. It looks like he was burned with boiling water; most of the top layer of skin is gone, but it doesn’t look like he damaged it too badly.

He taps it, and a bloom of black ripples through the wound. The whole thing twists once, and then exhales a puff of grey.

And then the pain comes again.

“ _OW OW OW OOOOOOWWWW!”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Cultural Notes:**  
>  _Haori_ \- A traditional coat worn over kimono, originally just on men, but has recently become more unisex.  
>  _Gogogo_ \- The Japanese sound effect for an atmospheric rumbling sound.  
>  _Misosazai_ \- 鷦鷯, "wren". It's used as a surname here. Reread the end of Gokudera's POV for a reminder of how Hibari's family works.


	31. The Recovery Of Interest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Alcohol abuse

The Kouyou’s prodigious nephew, famed for his anxiety and life-ruining stress, is as dry and crusty as his own grandfather. Maybe Naoki. Then again, nobody is as crusty as Naoki. He tries so _hard_.

Fuyumi dances into what looks like a cross between a sitting room and a board room with a bottle of alcohol she stole from their so-called secret stash, which is not, in fact, very secret. She pours herself a serving into her Japanese-style saké cup, and gives the baby Kouyou a splash too, just for giggles.

“To keep the stress off. Can’t have been too fun with all that murder, could it?”

“Mm.” Miki looks at the cup, then at her. Fuyumi has never seen eyes more lifeless. “You remind me a lot of Uncle Kunihiro.”

“I get that more than you’d think,” she titters, tossing back her drink.

He gives her a look that feels a little like being flayed alive. “That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Pretty sure they don’t mean it as a compliment either. Italian! Ben! You want a drink?”

Ben gives her a one-shouldered shrug, so she pours one out for him. Miki swirls his drink his his hand with a contemplative look on his face.

Then he knocks it back in two big gulps.

“You…you alright, kid?” Ben asks hesitantly.

Miki holds the cup up for a refill. Fuyumi gives him one, if only out of respect for how he handles his alcohol. “I had a man’s brain blown out all over my face, tortured someone, and fulfilled _three_ of my greatest fears within two days. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.”

“Well, now that they happened, they’re less scary, right?” Fuyumi suggests.

Miki gives her a Look. The flaying sensation washes over her again. _“No.”_

“So,” Ben says, in that awkward doesn’t-know-how-to-transition transition sort of way, “you seem to know a lot about this, er, magic shit already.”

Miki nods slowly, sipping more gradually this time. “You heard the guard…The ability to project energy through the eyes is really rare, even within the clan. It’s why Uncle Naoki is the heir to the group and the family. I-I, I’m, the second heir. So, if un- if uncle Naoki dies, or, I don’t know, goes blind, that’s me. The heir, I mean.”

“They taught you how to be a backup?” Fuyumi asks gleefully, dropping down to sit next to Ben. She leans over to whisper conspiratorially at him. “They keep all this magic stuff in the family. Anyone who gets a ranking position gets a tutorial.”

“Did you?” Ben asks.

“No. But your boss leader let me watch, once. I think he was hinting I should bring people in to brainwash. They’re very good at it.”

Miki gives her a slow, infinitely judgmental squint. Without blinking or looking away, he takes the bottle from her and pours himself another cup.

“That’s quite enough of that, mister underage teenage boy,” Ben says, lifting the bottle from his hands. Miki doesn’t struggle, but does look mildly irritated at the loss.

“So are you part of the Akiyama?” Fuyumi asks, before they start asking too many questions, or Miki changes his mind about letting the alcohol leave.

Miki shakes his head. “I’m…maybe a-a contractor. A contact. I’m supposed to move into police work or manage a business, if I don’t want to run with criminals. Somewhere with— with influence.”

“Awww, making you a corrupted official, that’s nice of them. What do you want to do?” Fuyumi leans over the table and bats her eyelashes at him.

Miki swirls the alcohol in his cup, looking hollowed-out and terribly, terribly bitter. “…Police sounds okay.”

“It does! And you even have a partner!” Fuyumi slaps Ben’s back. Ben almost chokes on the mouthful of rice wine he was trying to swallow. “Speaking of which! You boys wanna buy some guns?”

“ _No,”_ Miki barks.

“Don’t be a prude, you’ve been hanging out with criminals for ages.”

“Obon ceremonies aren’t hanging out with criminals!” Miki whines. “We _have_ to go to them, no one will leave us alone otherwise!”

“You’re paying respect to dead criminals. Same thing.”

A door slams. Fuyumi, always excited for drama and intrigue, scoots back and slides open the door to the room, just in time to see a flurry of cloth and bright red hair flying down the hallway. She leaps out of the way before Naoki tramples her.

“Miki-kun,” he breathes, an octave too high, “I am afraid I’ll have to take my leave. You can go home if you’d like.”

“O-Oh. I thought you might want to talk about—”

“We’re family. You may discuss the experience whenever you are comfortable. You may even do it over the phone. I know you are loathe to come here for anything but our…festivities.” Naoki clasps his hands together.

“We should,” Ben whispers.

“I…okay.” Miki nods slowly. “Thank…thank you for helping me, Uncle Naoki.”

“Oh, Miki.” As Miki passes, Naoki once again runs his hand reverently along Miki’s cheek. They all seem to do that to the kids in their family, like they’re in awe that they managed to propagate at all. It’s extremely creepy. If you want to keep touching your kids, you should be able to hug them. Pat their head. Pinch their cheek. Give them big mushy forehead kisses. See, Miki looks uncomfortable too.

“You can ask anything of us. You’re everything to us. Do you understand?”

Miki gives him a tight, stiff little nod, and immediately starts power-walking out of the room. Fuyumi, sensing she is unwelcome, is quick to follow. She can get a better sense of things from her sister, anyway. Ben trails behind, giving Naoki the stink-eye, because no street rat in Italy has any concept of weird cheek-stroking reverence towards children making sense. You’re meant kick children. Sometimes shoot them. Depends on if they’re open season or not.

Outside, Miki takes deep, choking breathes, and his hands are shaking.

“You doing okay?” Fuyumi asks.

“I’m— I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m doing fine.” He wrestles with the bandages around his eyes.

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he barks, and then sucks in a sharp little breath. After a moment, he exhales, and starts winding the bandages around his head. Ben joins them.

“He fixed your eyes,” Ben points out.

“He didn’t fix anything,” Miki says stiffly. “He didn’t…they don’t fix anything. They just control it. They’ve never fixed anything.”

“Miki.”

“They’ve never once fixed anything,” Miki hiccups. His voice winds thin from stress. “They’ve always just made it so I’m always here to do something for them. Right from the start.”

“I’m sure they love you,” Fuyumi tries.

Miki ties the knot with trembling, unskilled fingers.

“Of course they love me. That’s the _problem.”_

Fuyumi has never inserted her little sister in any situation that might be dangerous, even if her skills would be useful, and even the threat of something bad happening to _other people near her_ had set her teeth on edge. It strikes her as strange to love someone and still put this level of pressure on their heart. It’s strange that no one seems to think it might break from the strain.

“If you don’t want to go home, you can look at my collection with me,” she suggests. “I wanted to get more sizes sketched out for my body armour! You want body armour, don’t you?”

Ben looks like he would very much like body armour.

Miki snuffles sulkily, because he would also very much like body armour. “Whatever.”

Teenagers are so _easy_. She doesn’t know where the Kouyou family went wrong.

  
  


* * *

 

 

Hayato is squeezing cool water onto the hot skin of Yamamoto’s forehead while Shamal chats up one of his lady friends over the phone when he hears the knock at the door.

Shamal answers it fast enough that it comes off as twitchy, which is fine, because if Hayato were standing near the door he would probably sprint into it at full speed from the nerves.

“Yeees?” Shamal drawls.

“We’ve lost privilege to the hotel. We need to clear out.”

“I’ve got an unconscious and half-dead student here. Can’t this wait?”

“I, uh,” the guard clears his throat. “Well, I don’t see any problems here. You’re a doctor after all. But we’ll need to have a talk with the other one, so he needs to come with us. He’ll be accommodated appropriately. His bags are downstairs.”

Hayato sucks in a shuddering breath and squeezes his eyes shut. He’s not sure he can handle this, right now. Tsuna’s absence is a great big guilt trip clawed into the back of his mind, a noisy _you should have noticed, you should have brought him with you_. The illusion of other responsibilities has been his centre of gravity, and he’s not sure how he’ll manage without it.

Yamamoto’s skin is no longer grey, and the violet sheen of inflated vessels is gone. There’s vein-scars around the weird blue handprint around his wrist, and the scar on his forehead is like a dollop of wax sitting over skin, but he looks otherwise healthy. All that’s left is keeping his temperature under control.

Shamal peers into the bathroom. “You’re smart. Please give me an excuse to not treat a guy. I feel filthy just saving one.”

“Turn the shower on and run cold water over him,” Hayato suggests.

His eyes light up. “That’s my boy! Go lie to criminals, then, I’ll be sure to keep him from drowning.”

And that’s that. An agreement. There’s no reason to be in the hotel room anymore. Hayato reluctantly stands and trudges over to the door, and the guard waiting there. This is okay. Tsuna’s dad is taking care of things. It’s definitely better than sprinting through the woods worried someone shanked his boss. It’s a _lot_ better than finally getting there and finding out his boss _was_ shanked.

The hotel is already basically empty by the time they reach the bottom. The lobby is bare. Students are starting to mill about. Some of them are sitting in chairs, asking their parents to pick them up; a few girls are huddled around a cell phone, talking about bus schedules. One of them suggests taking the train to another town for the day and riding the bus back tomorrow. There’s no way Hayato is letting them do that unsupervised.

He’s given his bags. Tsuna’s bag is missing, and he’s not sure if that’s a good thing.

The CEDEF are all organized on the North end of town, just east of the trails, crammed tight as sardines along the street, like someone drew an invisible line between the sections of the town and they have no choice but to mingle within its boundaries. There’s a small motel across the street, which probably contributes to the location. More importantly…

“KUROKAWA!” Hayato screams.

Kurokawa jumps half a foot in the air and whirls around. She’s standing around next to Gun Kid and some girl Hayato has literally never seen in his entire life. They’re standing over Sasagawa, who is tucked snugly in a sleeping bag.

“Oh, there he is,” Kurokawa says. “Hi, Gokudera.”

“What the FUCK.” He storms over in a rush. “Why is the Boss MISSING?”

“He bolted. He always does that. It’s a little weird he stuck around this long, actually? I guess he couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting caught.” Kurokawa waves away. “Anyway, this is Miura Haru, Miura-san’s little sister. She knows how to do paper mache.”

“What do you mean — doesn’t this worry you? Even a little bit?”

“Well, I mean, I’m not happy he’s _upset_ , but he doesn’t like being around people when he’s stressed out. Leave him alone, okay?”

“Did he really stab a guy to death?” The younger Miura asks loudly. Sasagawa visibly winces. Right, he wasn’t awake for…basically anything. Coming along to make sure Tsuna was safe and waking up to learn his charge got stabbed in the chest and found his inner serial killer must feel pretty similar to the thing Hayato feels right now, which is _guilty and awful_.

Hayato swallows down something he tells himself is acid reflux. “After all that, you’re not even thinking of his safety? Do you realize how much danger he was in? How much danger he might be in right now?”

“Blah blah blah, god, you’re like his dad or something.” Kurokawa plays with her phone, completely ignoring that for all the absolutes Hayato tends to thinks in, _a teenage boy escaping right after his first kill_ is a _pretty decently dramatic_ _thing to yell about_.

“Are you listening to me? He’s MISSING and DANGEROUS.”

“Yeah. I heard. Everyone’s heard.” She gestures generally to all the CEDEF officers that aren’t paying attention to them.

Hayato takes out a stick of dynamite from his bag and prepares to light it. _“YOU THINK THIS IS A GAME?”_

“Uh-huh, sure,” she holds the phone to her ear. After a moment, she says, much quieter but no less callously, “hey Tsuna, you dead?”

Hayato drops the stick and practically tackles Kurokawa to the ground in attempt to get at her phone. _“BOSS?_ YOU OKAY?”

“Dude, shut up. They’re still looking for him,” Kurokawa grunts.

“Oh— shit.” Hayato holds the phone delicately to his ear and lowers his voice. “Boss?”

“ _Hey. You guys are all together now?”_ Tsuna’s voice is like balm against his mind. He sounds fine. A little cheerful, even. Is being cheerful after your first kill bad? What about after you get stabbed in the chest? After seeing your friend die? Technically die? Hayato didn’t take his acquaintances dying all that well when he was younger, but he was also nine years old and cared too much about literally everything.

“I left Yamamoto with a doctor just in case he gets worse, and I don’t see Miki, but everyone’s accounted for,” Hayato dutifully reports.

“ _Oh. Okay. I’m doing fine, but I don’t think I’ll go home tonight. When you get back, can you keep everyone as in-the-loop as you can? The Sasagawa family too, I don’t want Kyouko to get any weird ideas.”_

“What? But— but…you want me to tell the _girl?_ She’s a civilian, Boss!”

Sasagawa tenses up, and yanks his arm from his plush prison. “Is he saying what I think he is? Give me the phone.”

“I’m trying to talk to the Boss here—”

Sasagawa punches Hayato in the leg and extends his arm again. “Give it here _right now_.”

“ _You better do that. He’s aggressive,”_ Tsuna muses.

“More than half his bones are broken.”

“ _He always finds a way.”_

Hayato grits his teeth. Passing the phone to Sasagawa almost feels like peeling off his own skin, but the Boss’ orders are orders. (Which doesn’t stop him from crouching down to listen in.)

“We’re not telling my sister,” Sasagawa says briskly.

“ _She has the right to know.”_

“We’re not telling her.”

“ _Not telling her what? How much?”_ Tsuna’s voice loses that vague sense of cheer. A dog barks in the background, and Tsuna hushes it. _“Are we not telling her we almost died? I don’t mind. I’m not telling my mom about that, either. I meant the ruin incident, the abilities.”_

Sasagawa clenches his jaw, and Hayato can see the movement all the way to his temples. “I don’t like it. She should be able to live normally.”

“ _AND SO SHOULD I!”_ Tsuna yells into the phone, so suddenly that Sasagawa and Hayato both flinch. The contrast between his oncoming sulk and the scream feels like a slap to the face.

Quiet.

“… _We’re telling Kyouko. Nothing scary. You can figure out what story you want to tell if you want to.”_

Sasagawa glares at his lap. His eyes flick up to Kurokawa when she shifts awkwardly on her feet, then down again. “…Fine.”

“ _Thank you.”_

Hayato immediately snatches the phone back, glancing around at the myriad of people still ignoring them before cradling the phone around his ear. “Boss, where are you? What are you doing? They’ve left the hotel, but it looks like no one’s found you yet!”

Silence.

“ _I’m…uhm…”_

  
  


* * *

 

 

A man crashes through the top floor window of the real estate building and collides with the pavement alongside a shower of glass that cuts his face and hands to ribbons. He nudges Hatachi away from the danger with his foot.

“…Busy. Can I call you back later? Or, you know what, if you’re still with the agent people, you call me. I gotta go.”

“ _Wait, Boss, I still need t—”_

Tsuna hangs up.

Well, he’s still in contact with his friends, making him officially twice as stable as he usually is during his fleeing episodes. Unfortunately, he’s still stuck following Hibari around while _he’s_ having an episode of some kind, so that doesn’t amount to much. Hibari claimed to be home by dinner, but he’s pretty…excitable, at the moment, and if Kusakabe is to believed, extremely sleep-deprived, so Tsuna is probably going to have to stop by somewhere secluded and force Hibari to rest before actually getting home.

Right now, though, he’s a little wary of even being around him.

The man who was tossed through a window makes a pathetic groaning noise. Tsuna shuffles over to him. “You gonna be okay?”

The man whimpers and holds up his hand to the light, showing off the truly impressive amount of scratches and three long, unpleasant gashes that travel all the way down his arm. He went elbow-first, which was a good idea to minimize glass-shard-based injury, but still looks very painful all the same.

Tsuna doesn’t really want to follow Hibari in while he’s terrorizing yakuza, so he squats down and tears up the man’s ugly shirt so he can wrap up the wounds. The underside of his arm, where he roughly landed, is basically shredded. “Go to a hospital before you bleed out.”

The man gently gets to his feet and hobbles weakly down the street, arms dangling limply at his sides.

Tsuna feels surprisingly stable, at the moment, especially in comparison to how he felt an hour or two ago. He’s contacted people who care about him (even calling his mother willingly) and reinforced his presence in their lives. He’s not exactly about to go on some self-destructive Great Escape, which is a genuine concern when he’s spent all morning grappling with more trauma than he knows what to do with. He tended to be a flight risk when people so much as roughed him up, and that was _before_ he had feelings.

But also, he’s dressed like a girl and willingly inflicting Hibari Kyouya on himself.

And he is just, _super_ traumatized.

Tsuna calls Kyouko, next.

“ _Tsuna?”_

“Hi, Kyouko! Has anyone called you yet?”

“ _No. I’ve been trying to call my brother, but he won’t pick up.”_

“He was…” Tsuna’s eyes dance along the sky, quickly constructing a feasible lie that Ryouhei won’t punch him for telling, “unconscious. He fell off a cliff. Broke like a billion bones.”

Kyouko gasps. _“That’s horrible! When is he coming home?”_

“No idea! He’s awake and with Hacchan, though, so you can talk to him about it. Ruined the whole trip, though, everyone’s heading home. What’s been happening over there?”

“ _Hm? Oh, Kusakabe-senpai is teaching me how to hit things. I’m very bad at it,”_ Kyouko says earnestly. _“I’ve been making friends with your club! They seem like nice people.”_

Tsuna winces. “Yeah, they’re a little, uh. Excitable. Especially with Hibari-san being gone for so long…”

“ _Oh, yes, that. Do you know where he is?”_

Tsuna flinches at the sound of crashing inside the building.

“He…followed me over here! He was very angry. We had lunch.”

“ _Is he doing alright? Kusakabe-senpai said he was upset.”_

“He was very, very, very upset, yes. I showed him my dog, he’s fine now. Did you know he likes dogs?”

“ _I think he likes all animals. He feeds the birds out by the shrine.”_

“He what.”

A man tumbles down the stairs, leaps to his feet, and runs screaming out the door and down the street.

“ _What was that?”_

“Hibari-san’s victims fleeing his almighty power. I’m gonna go, uh, make sure he doesn’t kill anyone. As his secretary. Like I told you I would have to do and you didn’t believe me because you’re too nice to believe that would be necessary for anyone. You work hard with training! And call Hacchan!”

“ _Okay! Stay safe, Tsuna! And, er, don’t make Hibari-senpai upset, if you can. I think that’s actually even more of a bad idea than it is usually. I still don’t think you’re right that he’s normally so uncontrollably violent, but now might be a little…”_

“Haha! Will do, gottagobye!” Tsuna abruptly hangs up and barrels into the building before he admits something untoward about Hibari’s mental state at the moment.

Hibari had left a trail of destruction, starting at shattered doors and moving on to bodies. There are some broken limbs. Tsuna is starting to regret letting go of him now. He dances over sprawled limbs and marches up the stairs, to the origin of chaos. Hatachi races past him, far more eager to go see Hibari than Tsuna is.

The scene he ends up at is…not really as bad as he thought it would be. Hibari is really, really drowsy, and is limply going through the motions of destroying the yakuza, yawning intermittently. When someone attacks, he practically tears them in half with blunt force trauma alone, causing an odd mismatch of movement, between quick, forceful, ruthless violence and sleepy, fluid weaving. Like a snake with hammers for arms.

There’s only about three guys left. Tsuna steps into the room carefully. “Everything in order?”

Hibari steps out of the way of a knife slash with a bored grumble. “Weak.”

“Anyone tell you about the mafia yet?”

“They’re all ignorant.”

“Do you need a hand?”

“I can take care of this myse—”

“No, I mean, hand.” Tsuna wiggles his fingers.

Hibari’s lip curls with contempt, but he considers. After a moment, he holds out one hand. Tsuna gingerly takes the tonfa with his other hand and slides his already-cooled palm into Hibari’s. It’s only a little warm, which is probably good. Hibari gives Tsuna a few experimental squeezes, and lets out a pleased exhale.

A guy comes at Hibari with a crowbar. Hibari crushes him with nothing but an arm and a leg.

“How does it feel? The heat, I mean.”

“ _Pissed off._ ” Hibari kicks the last guy in the solar plexus. He looks vaguely important. Hibari looks like he notices that too, because he holds off on knocking him out. “You. Explain.”

“Explain _what_?” The guy barks.

“The people responsible for the disorderly conduct in this town.”

“Zeni,” Tsuna clarifies.

“I don’t know nothing about any Zeni! You want Taniguchi, and he’s out chatting with those Italian fuckers!”

“Don’t beat up the Italian fuckers,” Tsuna says quickly.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“A location,” Tsuna tries. “Do you have a location for the men who approached you before.”

“Why should I tell you?”

Tsuna’s mind spins, plays back every possible relationship he could ever have with these people, plays it all the way back to a dim room in the ruins and a desperate last bid to curry favour, plays it back to the chilling backlit figure of Hayato’s teacher rumbling _‘protect our own’._

“Because I’m part of the main family,” Tsuna recalls.

The man’s face scrunches up. Hibari looks at him with a really, really uncomfortable level of speculation. “What?”

“I…think? My mom’s name is Izumi Nana. My grandmother’s name is Izumi Kumiko. Izumi would have to be one of the families that belong to one of the big two clans in Hakuyou. And, uh, if I’m part of the main family, it’s not big two clans, it’s _one_ big clan, and I’m part of the branch family? I…failed social studies and no one told me about this, it’s the best I can figure.”

“You don’t have to do much more than that. I know Izumi Kumiko.” The man sits up and stares Tsuna down. “What are you doing down here? A daughter of the moon shouldn’t be nosing around at a time like this.”

Tsuna mouths _‘daughter of the what’_ while Hibari picks up his slack. “I’m interested in Zeni’s activities. I want to find him.”

The man falls back with a damp chuckle and mops his bloody nose. “You won’t find him. We’ve tried, they’ve tried, everyone’s tried.”

“What’s the problem?”

“They were operating out of an island where none of us could look for ‘em. Morita says it’s hidden with the _old powers_ , that their leader’s got some handle on them that only the main family could understand. Now that he’s is gone, there’s no way to find that shit. It’s just some invisible rock on the sea. But that Zeni guy’s not going back to his secret invisible island, he’s going back to fucking Italy, because his plan got fucked so bad, so no! I don’t know where he fucking is!”

“So. Ancient illusion powers,” Tsuna says slowly.

“I like it. Let’s go.” Hibari starts marching off, dragging Tsuna in tow.

“W-Wait! What about all the people you just beat up? And where are you going to find a boat?”

“I own a third of this town. They will _give_ me a boat,” Hibari sneers.

This is so objectively and unquestionably true, all Tsuna can do is whine and let Hibari drag him along, with Hatachi panting cheerfully at their feet. Hibari steps over his victims with grace and poise, while Tsuna stumbles awkwardly in his wake.

There are even more people out on the streets, many of them talking to each other, probably about how completely unbelievable the last few days have been. Maybe the last two weeks? The timeline is shaky in Tsuna’s head. He’s been so occupied in the immediate, and so many things have disrupted his usual time-tracking methods.

The shore is still being cleaned up, when they reach it. Hibari scans the line of it until he sees what he needs — a building sitting on the rocks just behind the treeline in the opposite direction of the trail, near the highway. They don’t approach the beach. Tsuna’s hands feel sweaty, and he keeps adjusting his grip on Hibari’s tonfa. It’s a little heavy, but the grip fits nice. He tries a few arm poses with it. It doesn’t feel quite right — too heavy for his brittle wrists. If someone hit him directly, they’d snap under the pressure.

Hibari doesn’t bother taking the side road off the highway or even the sidewalk that transitions to a dirt path, he just tramples right through the trees. Tsuna nearly trips four times trying to keep up.

“ _Hibari-san—”_

“Move,” Hibari demands.

And so he does, because Tsuna is more obedient than his own dog.

Hibari’s pushiness doesn’t end there. He doesn’t bother entering the building, just picks a motorboat on the little dock and hops in. Tsuna _does_ fall this time, collapsing onto Hibari’s back. Hibari chucks him onto the bench, and Tsuna almost falls backwards into the space between. Hatachi jumps into his lap seconds afterwards.

“You can’t steal a boat, Hibari-san.”

“I own this business. I’m allowed.”

“Do you even know how to drive a motorboat?”

“Of course I do.” Hibari checks for tethers. When he finds a chain, he flexes his fingers experimentally, clenches his hand into a fist, and after a moment of the world’s most unsettling Guts pose, hooks two fingers into the chain and _tears_ it.

Tsuna shrieks at the horrible creaking groan and scrambles to the front end of the boat. Hatachi yaps at him.

Hibari looks delighted at the twisted metal, even though he hadn’t actually managed to break the chain. He takes the length of it in both his hands and kicks it repeatedly until the warped steel can’t handle the stress and breaks free.

Hibari then turns around to smirk triumphantly at Tsuna.

“You _own_ the store. _They would have given you the boat_ ,” Tsuna wheezes.

The smirk drops. He turns around to start the engine.

Despite his omnipresence in downtown Namimori, an area that is landlocked, Hibari does, in fact, seem to know how to operate a motorboat. They’re off in seconds, heading towards the tiny bubbles of tree-covered land on the horizon. Tsuna doesn’t put on a lifejacket, because he still feels the subconscious need to look good in front of Hibari, but he does place one on his lap. Hatachi has jumped down to the base of the boat so he can perch his paws against the lid and look at the expanse of water whizzing by.

“So how _do_ we find an invisible island?” Tsuna asks conversationally.

Hibari looks at him like he’s asking why rain happens.

“…Earlier today you suggested that you’re experiencing a power vacuum,” Hibari says with a slow, irritated pointedness. “You’ve been using this vacuum to suppress me and keep me lucid _all day._ ”

Tsuna’s brain struggles to make the connection. They can find illusion island because…vacuum…?

“Oh,” Tsuna claps his hands together, “Oh! He said the power is basically the same kind of power I told you about, which means it’s a tangible force, which means when it comes in contact with me, it’ll be sucked up!”

“ _So get sucking.”_

Tsuna scowls, but prepares himself anyway. Parts of himself fall away, his sense of self decomposing, his existence is small, worthless, a body to be used as a tool, and the choking blackness is warm and welcome and something to embrace. Nothingness. Absence.

“That was fast.”

Tsuna blinks back into awareness to see Hibari is standing with one foot perched on the bench. Tsuna spins around to look at the head of the boat, where, right next to a tiny dollop of land about the size of Tsuna’s house, a huge portion of the horizon appears to be warping like heated metal. Hibari doesn’t bother to ask Tsuna to keep going — he just drives the boat right into the heart of the distortion.

They come out with a stomach-churning twist right in front of another island, pretty small as far as islands go, but large enough to house a small forest and a building at the top of a small hill. It’s so dilapidated Tsuna can’t distinguish its original purpose.

“We’re looking for…Zeni’s stash, I guess,” Tsuna muses. “So just take anything that looks out of place and throw it in a pile. Especially weapons.”

“And one of them will help me externalize the heat,” Hibari says.

“I mean, yeah, I guess.”

“That’s all I need.”

The boat touches down at the shore.

 

* * *

 

Someone’s already been through here.

Tsuna dances circles around huge swaths of _melted concrete_ and half-melted corpses. Everything smells like cooked flesh and rot. It looks like some body parts had unwound on a cellular level, leaving a cobweb of skin stretched underneath a fleshy pulp-free soup. He pinches his nose shut and tries to focus on Hibari’s back.

“How did someone even get in here?”

“Doesn’t matter. Take the upper floor. Any tools you find are mine.” He takes his tonfa back and swivels on his heel.

And then Hibari leaves him.

Alone.

With all the dead bodies.

“ _YEAH BUT WHAT IF THE MELTING GUY IS STILL HE_ — you’re not listening. AUGH.” Tsuna honestly isn’t all that worried; the only possible way to single-handedly melt concrete and people in an isolated sense would be with the coloured magic — the Red one, if Tsuna remembers correctly — which Tsuna is actively immune to. He’s just generically offended.

“I’m traumatized, you know,” he says, mostly to himself, marching upstairs with a huff. Hatachi looks between the two paths, and decides to sit his little poofy butt down and have a nap right there in the dusty, half-collapsed central hall. Tsuna doesn’t get dogs.

“I’ve experienced extreme psychological distress, and I think it’s quite frankly _heroic_ of me to not do anything awful or bad in that time! I’m talking to my friends! I’m not running away!” Wait, he ran away. “Anymore! I’m spending time with people I care about! Sort of! Honestly you’re more like, vaguely threatening, but that threat _matters_ to me.”

He kicks open a door. There’s a decomposing sofa and a headless woman. Gross.

“I’m uncomfortable up here!” Tsuna announces, louder, but he receives no response.

He storms down the hall, kicking down doors. They’re primarily empty until he finds what looks like a break room with its own little kitchenette. Tsuna shoves some collapsed drywall off to the side with his foot and starts combing through it. There’s obvious signs of activity, with beer bottles, a deck of playing cards in its package…he finds a pocket knife, and shoves it in his bag. It doesn’t look like there’s much in here.

Tsuna kneels down to look in a lower cupboard. There is wine here. Lots of wine. Lots of good, good wine, going to waste.

Tsuna immediately shoves two bottles in his bag and pops the seal on the third, which he tosses back. It feels hot and familiar and settles cozily in his belly, tingling on the way down. He doesn’t know how he survived this long without saké to smooth the way. His will was like iron.

Now adequately boozed up, Tsuna continues his adventure. The bag is starting to throw his balance, but he manages to keep upright just enough to avoid falling over. He takes sips intermittently as he kicks down doors and carefully nudges away giant chunks of fallen building. They set up camp in this shithole?

There is, again, not much of interest to hand over to Hibari until the end of the U-shaped floor, which is so stripped-down that it’s just wooden paneling. The last room is dark. Luckily, Tsuna is known for improvisation and terrible decision-making skills.

He kicks down the walls.

The planks and boards collapse under the force, and tumble down a floor. One chunk of wood bounces off the ground and falls off the cliff face carved into the little hill the building sits atop. It is really satisfying to watch.

Tsuna turns to look at the newly-illuminated room.

There are vines _everywhere_.

Thin, glittering silver strings, thick, achingly familiar blue vines studded with black bumps, flesh-toned ropes spread across the floor; they’re everywhere, all in different forms. It’s almost cartoonish, like a room in a tacky haunted house. When Tsuna touches the silver lines, it sticks with surprising ease, and he has to use his whole arm to retrieve his fingers. On a lot of them, the stickiness was utilized to hold up towers of documents, almost yellow with all the post-it notes sticking out from them.

Not just on the lines. All over the walls and the floor, spread in blooms right up to a pile of post-it pads in the corner, discarded next to a scattered collection of cheap plastic ballpoint pens.

This is Gi U’s room, and he was researching something.

It’s…honestly, it’s better than nothing. Tsuna starts plucking papers off the lines and stuffing them in his bag. They’re numbered, but erratically, and he doesn’t bother keeping them in order beyond what’s on the sticky silver thread in front of him.

He moves onto the walls. Now that they aren’t backlit, they’re easier to read. Italian — Tsuna recognizes a few words, almost all of them numbers and dates. His knowledge of Italian is…sparse, highly specialized, and mostly useless. The post-it notes aren’t helping, seeing as they’re in Korean. The documents seem to all be about some sort of science thing, with readings and comparisons between dates and all that.

Four papercuts and an empty bottle of saké later — he pulls out a second to make room in his bag — Tsuna finishes taking everything off the walls and progresses to the floor. Most of these are notebooks, and any files here already have folders. The one Gi U seems to have been focused on sits in front of a notebook with frenzied chickenscratch handwriting, stained with smears of blue ink. Tsuna stuffs the notebooks in his bag and looks at the folder.

Inside is a series of typewriter-written documents in Italian, covered in even more Korean post-it notes that Tsuna is beginning to suspect are translations. It continues on for a few pages, often providing lists and subsections that Tsuna can't read, until Tsuna's fingertips come upon a glossy surface. He turns the page, and is met with a pair of wide, sunken violet eyes set in the severe features of an absurdly thin child, roughly five years old, peering out from behind a shoulder-length seaweed-like tangle of black hair. The child is wearing nothing more than a worn, ill-fitting grey shift that hangs loosely over their frame, revealing the unnatural boniness of their figure. Their fingers are tangled up in the hems of the scrap of cloth, a visibly anxious gesture even with just the photograph. They're surrounded by dull grey cement walls and floors, and sitting with a slight hunch. The photograph is labeled #721.

It takes Tsuna a moment to understand that the child in the photo is Gi U.

Tsuna feels sick. The mental image of Zeni slamming the kid’s skull against the wall is played with new shades of unpleasantness, a context that sends a chill across his alcohol-heated skin. He wipes his face clumsily with the back of his hand and slides the files back into place. They all get stuffed in his bag.

The last folder is in English — ‘Green Door Project’. Tsuna sorts through it, but again, he is awful at any language that isn’t Japanese. He tries anyway. There are colour copies of handwritten notes, with sections of seven repeated over four pages. It doesn’t make much sense to him. He puts it in his bag.

Tsuna sniffles and retreats from the room, feeling sick and scared. He wants to know why Zeni and Gi U were working together. How Gi U got from tiny and shriveled and bony to everything he is now. He feels like he missed an opportunity to do something, somewhere, and now there’s a homicidal ten-year-old running around all alone because Zeni’s horrible plan failed. That’s so awful. Tsuna wants to cry.

In fact, he does cry, in great big gloppy tears that stream down his face, draining the rest of his energy. He sags into the wall and hugs his bag. Most of it is stiff from the single remaining bottle of alcohol and all the papers. Tsuna hiccups and takes a swig of his saké and wishes it tasted like the kind his dad used to drink with him. He wishes he didn’t run. He wishes he could be with his dad. He wants to hug his dad and forget any of this ever happened. He wants to lay down with his dad and pretend _nothing_ bad has ever happened to him, and he’ll be fine now. He wishes he could feel in control without using ugly vacuum powers he got from an ugly, horrible event, wishes he could talk about it with someone who cares about him, but he can’t trust anyone with it unless he knows for sure they don’t have any interest in him to begin with. He likes to think he’s stable, but he isn’t, because if he were he would have just gone home or asked someone to come adventure with Hibari and him, but he didn’t because going out on a trip with someone who doesn’t care enough about Tsuna to have a strong opinion on him either way was the most exciting idea ever to him and the novelty took over where the appeal of being isolated was waning.

Tsuna wants to go home.

It’s around then he feels the explosion downstairs.

 


	32. The Recovery Of Hibari Kyouya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the edgiest thing I've ever written in my entire life and that includes the last time I wrote this exact chapter. Feels good. Feels organic
> 
>  **Warnings:** Alcohol abuse, drunk minors, extreme violence against minors, torture of minors, sexual harassment of minors, allusions to child sexual assault, suicide ideation, sad drunks, vomiting, blood, gore, death

Hibari Kyouya is exhausted, but he feels more well-rested than he has in years.

All his life, for as long as he can remember, a  _hunger_  has been bubbling just underneath his skin. The urges of a predator; kill, dominate, eradicate. It burned to the point of distraction. It sharpened his mind to perfection, but destroyed his control, and he would sleep away the agitation to keep it in check. It would grow otherwise, like a disease. He liked it.

It's never occurred to him to wonder what life would be like without it.

His hand is cool now. The heat of his skin is usually so consistently high that the only way to check for fevers is a thermometer, and yet when he holds his hands together now, the skin feels cold. Almost alien. This seems to be an unintentional side-effect of direct contact with the secretary.

The  _intentional_  side-effect is even more distracting. There is no burning killing urge pressing at his mind. It agitates him. He can  _feel_  it grow inside him, like a cup spilling over, but it's not enough to break the feeling of blind serenity. The overall sensation of calm is unnatural and unfamiliar and he's torn between the pure enjoyment of it and the urge to recoil.

This would be a great time to take a nap.

There is no one left in the collapsed building. There is no sound. The culprit behind the melted entrance had carved a path upstairs. In Kyouya's experience, valuables tend to be on the ground and basement floors. The secretary can take care of himself. Even if he can't, the secretary is immune to these unnatural abilities.

With a stab of sudden, uncontrollable excitement, Kyouya realizes that his Father's aura can't be natural — and thus the secretary might not even react to it.

He chokes down the thrill. That's Kyouya's business. It's always been Kyouya's business.

There are no weapons or notable items that might funnel the raw energy inside him. The fact the irritation isn't thorns under his skin anymore doesn't change the fact he's  _irritated_. He has very little to do here besides this. He doesn't particularly want to go home, not even to Kusakabe's warm, harmless house where he could sleep for a week undisturbed. Not even to his secluded hospital beds, where everyone would forget he was there, with time.

Kyouya thinks he would prefer wandering around at the secretary's inane whims. He doesn't like being in unfamiliar places. The secretary's confidence is a helpful bridge between that discomfort and how  _bored_  he is right now.

He shoves a door open. Futons, wall to wall. The people who used these beds are either dead or arrested. Maybe. Kyouya didn't think to ask.

He starts rifling through drawers and beds. Nothing that could be what he needs. This place looks terrible, and reminds him of that hollowed-out building they had purged the rest of the high-schoolers from. He kicks a broken table out of the way and moves on. Not a lot of the rooms seem to be in use. The next room has better furniture, with a table surrounded by chairs. Playing cards are scattered across it, along with a pair of guns, which Kyouya stuffs in his hoodie pockets. Convenience store dinner packages and wrappers are coating the floor. It's disgusting.

Kyouya steps into the hall again, and suddenly, he can feel it.

Heat.

Breathing knives.

He shudders. It feels nothing like Home does, but his fighting instinct sparks to life anyway. His frozen hand throbs painfully with the surge of heat, but he ignores it. His mouth unconsciously meets his torn, poorly-bandaged knuckles, and his teeth dig into the sour flesh. The taste of scabbed-over skin is a familiar one.

Someone with that power is in here with him.

Kyouya glances at the roof. He could ask the secretary to get in here, but he'd much rather have him finish up investigating the upper floor. If Kyouya can overwhelm the newcomer — and he likely can — it'll save time.

Kyouya pulls his knuckle from his mouth and unsheathes the fangs of his tonfas with a wry twist of his mouth. Oh, he's felt sensations worse than this. He can  _definitely_  take on whoever this is.

The enemy is around the corner. He strolls into view, not expecting much based on the aura. He's used to feeling the most minute of decisions echo through the air he's tasting, whether aura is involved or not, and they aren't springing to attack just yet.

He stops and peers at who he's about to bite to death.

Foreigner. Blond. Older than twenty, maybe around forty, beard, suit, automatically irritating. Kyouya's eyes flick to his hands. He's got a suitcase in one and a tachi in the other. The hand holding it is adorned in a metal claw ring, which is glowing green. A  _definite_  usable conduit.

"Are you recovering a stash?" Kyouya asks. He eyes the suitcase hungrily. Two obvious conduits, and a hypothetical collection of even more of them.  _Perfect._

"Never hiring an illusionist off the street again," the man grunts. His fingers twitch. Kyouya raises his tonfas slightly in response.

"I'll be taking those," Kyouya announces.

"Cute. Who are you again?"

"Hibari Kyouya."

The man raises two thick blond eyebrows. "Oh. Nice to meet you, Kyouya. My name is Romolo Zeni. Look what I can do."

He tosses the tachi into the suitcase-wielding hand, raises his clawed finger, and a beam of eye-searing acid green fires from it. Kyouya flinches at the sudden burst of colour exploding against his senses, which gives it enough time to hit.

It doesn't feel like anything, at first. He knows it's concentrated in his chest, and it has enough force to lift his feet off the ground, but he doesn't  _feel_  an impact.

Not until he goes flying into the wall behind him and cracks his head against the cement.

He growls and hits the ground hands-first, shuddering. The pain is throbbing at the back of his skull, but it's shaking down his spine, his ribcage, like his entire skeleton was jostled. He's probably bleeding, but he's not in the mood to check.

Slowly, Kyouya gets to his feet.

"Let me guess," the enemy states matter-of-factly, "high pain tolerance."

"I don't have a tolerance for anything," Kyouya sneers, and dives forward.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna slowly makes his way down the stairs, looking around cautiously. There's no sign of anyone entering after them, but Hatachi is sitting on his haunches panting cheerfully and making aborted little movements, which Tsuna is wary of knowing the dog's chasing habits.

Tsuna places his bag gently down next to Hatachi, mops his cheeks with a sloppy smear of his sleeve, and slips on his knuckledusters.

"I'm immune," he tells himself shakily. "I'm immune."

And he has dodging powers.

"I have dodging powers," Tsuna says out loud.

He makes his way down the hallway Hibari had gone through. He can hear the sounds of fighting going on. Sweat beads on his forehead. Is it Romolo Zeni? Can he take away someone's power, like that? The only time he's tried is holding onto Hibari for two hours and stabbing a guy in the face repeatedly, and the latter had less to do with having vacuum powers and more to do with having a knife and the determination to succeed.

Tsuna adjusts his frigid fingers and tries to move faster. He can't quite remember what Hayato told them about the guy. Immortal, probably?  _How?_  Is it possible to tie him up and have Tsuna sit on him until he's vulnerable? Is that even something Tsuna is capable of doing after drinking a fifth of his weight in alcohol?

The building rumbles under his feet. Tsuna flinches. Well, whether or not he can, it's his job to try. Probably.

Tsuna takes a step forward, about to round another corner, when Hibari's body goes flying right past him.

Into the wall.

Past the wall.

Through _two metres of cement_.

Tsuna's mind freezes, leaving him standing there, staring blankly at the leftover sparks of green that burn his eyes, and the crumbling wall slowly breaking down into a massive, gaping hole. There's no body laying there. He must have flown all the way through. Hibari was just thrown…and the wall…

The information doesn't want to slot together, but he forces it to as the sound of footsteps approaches.

Hibari was thrown through two metres of cement.

Therefore, Hibari is dead.

If not from a snapped spine, then simply from all his meaty bits turning into mush. The hole he made is huge, and the force required to create that and keep going would be equivalent to a wrecking ball. Over 500 kilograms of localized force on a human body would be — he's dead.

Tsuna staggers back, struck by a peculiar sensation of unreality. No, that's wrong. Hibari can't die. Hibari doesn't die. In no reality would that make sense. He's not dead. Not even being chucked into a wall at terminal velocity would be…

Tsuna shakes his head and backsteps into the nearest room just in time to avoid meeting whoever threw Hibari, and ends up falling flat on his ass, either out of regular dame-ness, shock, or just how incredibly drunk he is right now. He mushes his face into the dusty floor and curls his legs away from the doorway. The horror can't reach his mind right now; his emotions feel jammed up and locked away, while his rational thought chugs cheerfully away.

So, this person could chuck Hibari into a wall hard enough to shatter it. Magic! Tsuna could probably take them.

He waits until he hears the sound of the person advancing past the broken wall and gets back up again. He can take them. Just gotta…stand.

Standing is  _way_ harder than he remembers it being.

Tsuna slumps against the wall and slowly pulls himself up. His vision is spinning, and with it, his stomach, but he doesn't feel nauseous just yet. Not undergoing any symptoms of alcohol poisoning after two bottles? His dad would be proud.

As quietly as possible, Tsuna starts tip-toeing back out, headed for the opening in the wall. He can hear the low, deep rumble of a man's voice, crooning almost. Tsuna clings to the wall and inches closer until he can peek outside.

"Do you like it?" The newcomer is honey-blond, with long straight hair that cascades down his back, and an impeccably groomed beard that cuts in sharp edges across his ruddy pink chin. It's the man who shot the yakuza guy yesterday. He's wearing a brown tailored pinstripe suit today, untouched by any sign of battle, and his fingers are crackling with green lightning. One of them still has that metal talon on it, and it appears to be literally glowing.

"I have to admit, your battle prowess is impressive for someone who isn't familiar with weapons like these. I like that, kid. You're going to go far, I can feel it. I've got an eye for potential, you see. I can tell when people got the  _spark_."

Tsuna inches a little farther in, observing him move. Why is he still talking like Hibari is alive? If anyone could survive getting punched through two metres of cement so hard they don't stop when they come out the other side it's Hibari, but that's technically hyperbole, and the man can't honestly know of Hibari's memetically unstoppable nature. That's something of a cultural understanding in Namimori.

But then, just as Tsuna thinks this, Hibari staggers to his feet with no visible signs of injury. Hibari looks just as confused about this as Tsuna is.

"Surprised? I don't blame you. It's my own special weapon, you see. I like giving my favourites little baubles, but this is my signature Heirloom, and my prized ability; Innocent Torture!" He holds his hand out, and that offensively green beam shoots out of his finger and strikes Hibari again. Hibari is sent flying another few feet, and lands roughly on the ground, kicking up clouds of dirt. Tsuna winces. "It's wonderful, isn't it? The reinforcing power of my Lightning Flames protect your delicate skin from breaking, but you still feel all the damage you would have accumulated! It really is incredible...I can torture someone into insanity without hurting a hair on their head!"

_Ah._

"I've got quite a few of these," Romolo Zeni continues. "They have powers of the likes you could never imagine. You're interested in my, ah…'stash', yes?"

Hibari wobbles violently in his attempts to stand. Sure enough, none of his many wounds have re-opened, yet. A gun falls out of his pocket. Why the hell is Hibari fighting with tonfas when he has  _guns?_

"I've lost a lot of stock, but you, you're brilliant. Worth the trouble." The man extends his taloned hand out to Hibari. "Work for me. I'll make it worth your while."

"You…" Hibari cranes his neck left and right. Then he casually brushes the stone dust from his shoulders. His sense of balance returns. The way he shakes it out of his hair seems almost playful, and the dark, dangerous smirk on his face matches the mood. "You're the one responsible for all this trouble at the beach, yes?"

"Relying on your assets too much will always lead to mistakes," Zeni shrugs.

"I see." Hibari flicks his tonfas back into a fighting position, and out come  _spikes_. To Tsuna's memory, those are meant for breaking down machinery. They're not…those aren't  _people_  weapons. If you beat someone with a spiky object,  _they will die_.

"All you're telling me is that my body can still carry me, no matter how hard I'm hit, right?" Hibari continues.

"Haha…huh?"

"The students that came here are Namimori citizens. Furthermore, among their number are students from Namimori Middle School." Hibari steps forward, unencumbered by what should be, going be Zeni's words, debilitating pain at a level strong enough to drive people insane.

"…You're a little beyond pain tolerance, aren't you," Zeni muses aloud.

Well, that's only natural.

In Namimori, Hibari is known exclusively as an unstoppable force that, when met by an immovable object, will just shatter the thing and keep moving. You'd need to either work him over — like whoever gave him those handprint bruises — or coerce him — as Tsuna did — to get him to back down.

Making Hibari feel pain is neither of those things.

' _Innocent Torture'_  may sound impressive for someone used to fighting the average person, but in terms of things effective against Hibari, it's the worst possible weapon.

Hibari stands tall, proud, and immovable, like a statue of a heroic figure. "For interfering with the educational integrity of Namimori citizens,  _I_ _'ll bite you to death_."

 

* * *

 

The students aren't grouped together for long.

"Back on the buses," a black-haired woman declares. "You're going home."

"I didn't get here by bus," the girl Hayato doesn't recognize waves her arm.

"You can ride out by yourself. The rest of you have baggage, though, and I'm guessing you want to leave with it all." She nods her head towards the buses.

Hayato opens his mouth to argue, to point out  _Tsuna isn_ _'t back yet,_  but Kurokawa kicks him in the ankle and beams. "Thaaaanks! You know, this whole thing was like, tooootally scary? I'm sooo glad we don't have to deal with it anymore!"

The woman grimaces deeply and nods. A larger man plucks Sasagawa up from the ground — careful not to disturb the cellphone still pressed against his ear — and escorts Kurokawa and Irie to the crowd piling into the vehicles. Sasagawa shouts platitudes at his sister through the phone. Hayato silently hopes she has her volume turned down. The shouting is obnoxious enough with air between them to dampen it.

"I left a friend in our room with his doctor," Hayato tells the woman.

"We understand. We'll have people in contact with your doctor until he's ready to leave."

Hayato frowns, but he can't think of any more excuses. They  _know_  Tsuna's gone, and based on how little regard the woman is giving him, they don't care about Hayato's responsibilities over him. Tsuna might not even need him. He sounded okay. He sounded happy. He just wishes he knew  _where the fuck he is_.

He steps towards the bus to start wrangling up the kids in that useless, heinous fucker Yamazaki's absence, but a heavy hand claps on his shoulder.

Hayato turns slowly to meet the eyes of Tsuna's father.

"Hayato," he says heavily, "you'll be coming with me."

Hayato supposes the look being leveled at him is supposed to be imposing and grave, but he recognizes it immediately as the same look Tsuna gave him when Hayato had slammed him against the hallway walls when they first met. Knowing now that Tsuna was _bewildered_ takes the teeth out of the way his dad stares at him now.

"I'm sorry,  _sir,_ " Hayato bites, swatting the arm away, "but my teacher is gone, so I need to escort the students of my school safely to their destination."

"We have escorts."

"You have  _complete fucking strangers_  after people were getting  _shot in the street_. Are you  _kidding?_  Are you  _fucking with me?_  Have you ever  _met_  a child?" Hayato spreads his fingertips over his chest in a furious gesture to himself. "I'm the student council president, and I'm the closest thing to an authority figure they're willing to take! I suppose I could leave them with my  _vice president,_  but where the  _fuck_ is he? Little guy, glowing eyes, you know him?"

Iemitsu's eyes smooths out in a way that incriminates him. Hayato throws his hands up in the air.

"Even your kid is gone! Am I supposed to be responsible over him while you're  _taking care of things?_  Am I supposed to fucking juggle the entire first year of my school with the Boss' complete fucking inability to sit still, or are you honestly telling me I ought to ignore  _both_?"

"Listen, separating you may have been a mistake, I specifically ordered—"

"I don't  _care_  what you ordered! I'm in charge of those students  _right now!_  I'm  _thirteen fuckin_ _' years old_  and this is the most responsibility that I'll  _ever_  take on before I blow myself up into fat meaty chunks, so I am  _getting! On! That! Bus!_ _"_

Iemitsu's face remains still. Then, with a sigh, he throws his hands up. "If you insist. I'll see you back at the house."

Hayato's accusatory finger droops. "Ah…huh?"

"At the house, Hayato," Iemitsu says with a razor-edged cheer, "we're going  _home_ , aren't we?"

Hayato feels his life flash before his eyes. It wasn't a good one.

* * *

Tsuna feels his life flash before his eyes. It was a pretty bad one.

Stone dust rains from above his head, and Zeni pries himself from the imprint in the building Hibari had pounded him into. He leaves a person-shaped hole, like in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

What the  _fuck_ , honestly.

Tsuna ducks back inside when Zeni hops down from his crater and dusts himself off.

"I knew you had a Halo, but I can tell your case is a little more  _extreme._  If you won't listen to reason, I suppose I don't have a choice."

Hibari smells like burnt rubber. Or, more specifically, his tonfas do; the grips are smoking under his hands, sort of like what he was doing to Tsuna's hands in the hotel lobby. Tsuna flexes his fingers in the grip of his knuckleduster at the reminder.

Romolo takes out a gun and shoots Hibari in the head.

Hibari hits the ground with a barking scream that makes Tsuna flinch, and the bullet bounces away with a high-pitched little  _plink_. Hibari's legs kick and dig into the dirt in obvious agony, and blood dribbles down from his forehead down to his chin.

"Wow, colour me corrected!  _Someone_ _'s_  gone Flame-active! That was a real lead bullet, and it went  _flying!_ _"_  Zeni laughs.

Tsuna sees red, just then.

He sees Zeni shooting that yakuza, he sees Zeni slamming Gi U's head against the wall, he sees Takeshi, laying on the ground, dead, and every path suddenly leads to  _Zeni,_  and how much Tsuna  _fucking hates him_. If Hibari had died from that, Tsuna would have tackled him.

Fortunately, Hibari is functionally immortal through willpower alone, and he stands up with minimal effort.

"Not surprising," Zeni continues, unperturbed, "Flames are all about willpower. A kid as intense as you must have been  _born_  with a Halo. Burns, doesn't it."

Hibari hesitates. Zeni takes a few steps forward. Tsuna realizes, with discomfort, that he doesn't seem to be all that shaken up by being thrown into a wall hard enough to make a person-shaped hole. Another concept sluggishly rises in Tsuna's mind, dampened with alcohol and horror at all this super sentai bullshit.

"Do you know how many Flame-active people there are in the mafia?  _Loads._  But they aren't like us, are they? They don't know what it's like. They have to call on that power. They don't know how it feels to have their Flames call on  _them_." The claw glows and sparks with lightning again, but Hibari doesn't react.

"What do you know?" Hibari asks quietly. He seems lost.

"Everything. I know how it burns. I know the  _rage_. The pure _feeling_. The way it begs to be free! People like us don't need  _conduits_!" Zeni spreads his arms theatrically. His other hand glows green too, softly under the skin like his bones are lighting up. "Isn't it obvious? This is  _true_  power!"

It clicks.

Innocent Torture, the ability to protect someone from harm while letting them experience all the pain of the attack.

Logically speaking, if Zeni can invoke that ability onto someone else, he can invoke it on  _himself._

_He_ _'s invulnerable because he's coating himself in Flames._

"Shit," Tsuna hisses under his breath.

"Are you sure you won't work alongside me?"

"I am beholden to no one," Hibari snarls.

It's useless. Hibari slams a tonfa in Zeni's stomach that would have sent Tsuna to the hospital, and Zeni barely reacts. Strikes that would have shattered bones only make Zeni slide around a bit from the force. Hibari is breathing heavily now, and clearly furious at how little his attacks are working. He shoves a foot forward and slams a sizzling tonfa-weilding fist into Zeni's stomach. Zeni, once again, goes flying into the wall, this time the one right next to the hole Tsuna is peeking through. Dust explodes from the damage, and the impact shakes through the already half-collapsed building. Tsuna flops over uselessly, his alcohol-addled mind not equipped to handle the world vibrating.

"It's useless, kid. I can't be touched," Zeni laughs. "Just take the offer."

"Die," says Hibari.

Tsuna can hear the sound of Zeni prying himself from the wall again. When he looks, Zeni is still strolling casually back into place, completely unharmed.

Hibari won't win.

God, what a weird thought.

"Pity," says Zeni.

Then, so fast Tsuna can hardly catch it, he whips the claw and sends a beam of green twice as enormous as before at Hibari, who flinches violently and instinctively blocks with his tonfas.

Hibari is dragged off his feet and sent spinning through the air in a blur. Tsuna claps his hands over his mouth when Hibari's body  _ **SLAMS**_  into the outcropping of stone at the peak of the island, and the whole earth trembles with the might of the collision. Seeing the impact, speed, and final collision all at once, Tsuna knows the average person would be  _vaporized_  by a hit like that.

"You may think you're special, and that might be true," Zeni says softly, mostly to himself, "but sometimes people are just stronger than you are."

That's not possible.

Tsuna gets to his feet shakily. He's a vacuum. He's a vacuum.

"Oh well. I always like  _live_  additions to my collection. Great conversation pieces."

 _That_ _'s not possible_.

 

* * *

 

Everything goes white.

In Kyouya's experience, this is generally accompanied by numbness, followed by rage. Strangely, it's just rage, right now. It  _hurts,_  more than anything has ever hurt, and it feels like  _noise_  in physical form, even as the throbbing wound of the bullet's impact fades away, the trembling in his chest is so bad that he finds it impossible to breathe.

His limbs shake when they bring him back up again, but he's overstimulated. He can't think straight, and complex movements feel beyond him. The world is tilted and he can't remember what it means to have balance. Hurts. Hurts. Hurts. Hurts.

Kyouya has been thrown into walls before. That usually comes with broken bones and bruising bad enough to require hospitalization to prevent fatal levels of internal bleeding. This should be  _nothing_.

Shattered grey stone falls around him as he crawls out of the wide crater left in the stone peak. His insides are constricting, wincing at the imaginary pain, and he thinks he's suffocating to death. He's dizzy. Teeth buzzing.

That man stands before him, smiling in a way that makes Kyouya's vision blur with rage. Kyouya stumbles forward and throws a clumsy strike that is easily deflected. A polished shoe is driven into Kyouya's stomach, and that damage is  _real_ , cleaving into his existing wounds. He gurgles and crumples to the ground, where he dry heaves up spittle in the absence of food. The strain on his insides is painful.

He looks up to a world that's spinning wildly around him. He can see the red blob of the secretary standing just outside the building, straight-backed and waiting. Kyouya realizes that he's going to need to use the secretary to  _not die_ , and he's  _never been more furious in his life_.

"Look at you," The man says softly. He runs a hand over Kyouya's face. Kyouya bites down on his fingers, and the man doesn't even flinch. Kyouya can feel the resistance, like biting down on rubber. "Who hurt you like that? You've got such a nice face."

Kyouya's teeth dig in deeper, hard enough that the man's bones should snap. They don't.

"In terms of live collections, the kid was better, though. Both of them, now that I think about it. I'll have to go find them, later." Zeni snakes his fingers over Kyouya's head with smooth, light fingers, and then there's a sudden spike of pain as Zeni grabs a fistful of hair and  _yanks._ The way it pulls at his skin re-awakens the pain of the gunshot wound. "I really lost a profit, here, I'll tell you. I'm willing to lose pretty little decorations like you if it means I can turn a profit."

The Secretary is moving towards them. Kyouya can't tell how fast. He can't think. Hurts.

"Let's see…How old are you, high school? I know a few people who would appreciate an Asian high-schooler. Always good to know people's kinks. That's how you make the money."

The Secretary _sprints._

Kyouya wants to tell him to go away, to leave him, but he's faced with the reality of his own death at the hands of some nobody riding on his false immortality.  _Hurts._  His breath is trembling. There's no way of comparing it to Father.  _Hurts._  It's nothing but a crushing feeling.

It hurts.

Is he weak?

" _You get your filthy fucking hands off of him,"_  the Secretary spits, and raises metal fists.

 

* * *

 

All Tsuna can feel is hatred and all he can see is the tread of tears down Hibari's face.

There's something impossible about Hibari, something triumphant and untouchable, and the only way Tsuna could parse him is in terms of something beyond human. Godlike. He was something Tsuna flinched away from, defined by his vague outline and how  _important_  he felt. The relief he felt at not being under his gaze was near-constant. The influence of Hibari's existence seemed almost at odds with the person himself, petulant and entitled and petty, but it was  _never_ in question.

There are tears spilling down Hibari's face, now, carving clean lines in the dust and blood on his face, he's helpless in Zeni's hands, he is being regarded like a butcher inspecting a hunk of meat. A pure, unblemished string of relatability is tied between Hibari and the worst period of Tsuna's entire existence, and for the first time in what he thinks might be his whole life Tsuna feels _pure hatred_. It feels trembling and dark, a black hole in his heart, and he's never,  _never_  wanted someone dead as much as he does now. The tension in his chest that used to tell him  _Sawada Tsunayoshi You Are About To Die_  is strangling him with a new declaration, easy and uncomplicated. There's no desperation. Just intent.

_Sawada Tsunayoshi, You Are About To Kill._

"Who the hell are you?" Zeni asks.

" _Get your hands off of him,"_  Tsuna repeats. He almost chokes on the words, with how drawn his chest has become. He chokes on the air itself. His skin prickles. The anger feels like a wave crashing over his nerves, and the force of it brings tears to his eyes.

"Oh," Zeni casually pulls Hibari up by the hair and tosses him to the side like unwanted luggage. "A teenage  _girl._  That's  _definitely_  turning a profit."

Everything feels like black.

Tsuna sprints at him with a guttural scream that rips from his throat so hard he can feel it scratch its way out. He drives his brittle arms into Zeni's chest, and it doesn't give. He isn't sure if he expected it to or not. Zeni slips his hand around Tsuna's cold skin and hoists him in the air. He ignores Tsuna's furious kicks, and simply turns away from the spittle sent flying with all of Tsuna's feral shrieks.

" _ **I'LL KILL YOU!"**_

"Ha! Deja vu. No Halo, won't regret getting rid of  _you_." Zeni drags Tsuna back to Hibari, who he grabs by the hair again. Hibari looks unfocused, and his breathing is thin and ragged, and Tsuna feels like he's violating something just by seeing it. The loathing re-ignites, and he tears at Zeni's sleeve. He thinks he's crying too.

It aches, the idea that he can't hurt him, that he can't tear his throat out. Is this what Takeshi felt?

Zeni tosses Hibari at his feet and slams his foot down on his ribs. Hibari makes a noise that makes Tsuna's breath catch. The tension in his chest is so overwhelming it feels like he might die from it.

"Sorry, kiddo, but this is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurt him," Zeni smiles beatifically, presses his claw into Tsuna's side, and releases the charge.

Tsuna's vision is engulfed in green, and he flops to the ground uselessly.

Zeni is no longer smiling.

He releases burst after burst of acid green light, all of them absorbed by Tsuna's shaking shoulders. Tsuna can't feel his own skin anymore, and the jolts of electricity are starting to make him convulse.

"What the fuck!" Zeni shouts in Italian. "What the  _fuck_!"

Tsuna claws at Zeni's jacket. It doesn't matter if it works or not. If it doesn't, he'll try anyway. If it doesn't, he'll keep going until it does. It doesn't matter.

" _What the fuck are you?!"_

It doesn't matter, because he should have leapt in from the start. He's different now. It's not like schoolyard squabbles where he has a gun pointed at his head and his only weapon is calm and he has to wait for Hayato or Hibari to save him.

" _ANSWER ME!"_

There is no gun aimed at his head, now.

And Tsuna is not calm.

And since Hibari is down for the count — _because of him,_ he thinks — he may as well take up 'biting to death' duty.

"Are you  _DEA_ _—_ "

Tsuna leaps up, buries his face in the nape of Zeni's neck, and digs his teeth in the meat of his ruddy pink flesh with all of his might.

He breaks skin instantly, and a satisfying yet unpleasant rush of blood seeps into his mouth, making him gag. Zeni makes the mistake of trying to rip Tsuna off of him; Tsuna has too much muscle between his teeth, creating an effective clamp that keeps him firmly stuck. A last-ditch effort to toss him off results in another wave of blood, and something within Tsuna's teeth gives away and squishes far too softly in his jaws. His mouth slips down the sudden slipperiness, and the loss of hold makes it easier for Romolo to chuck him into the grass.

Zeni heaves great, desperate breaths, clutching his bleeding neck. His entire right side is stained in blood. Tsuna rises into a crouch and spits out the hunk of flesh he had torn off, staring the mafia boss right in his sallow green eyes.

Hibari laughs.

Tsuna momentarily loses all ability to acknowledge reality, and focuses solely on Hibari, who is still on the ground, but slowly rising. He hears it again – not quite a true laugh, just a little exhale with a tinge of humour, a slight  _'pufu'_. His hair hangs in his eyes, covering his face and the expression on it. Tsuna isn't sure he wants to know what Hibari looks like when he's laughing. It's entirely possible that this may be the first time Hibari has ever laughed in his entire life. Namimiddle doesn't tend to have a running commentary on Hibari's capacity to feel emotions, seeing as it has become a popular rumour that he only has two of them ('disobedience' and 'order', respectively), so Tsuna isn't really sure how to handle this new information. Does Hibari laugh? Does Hibari laugh at obscure things one doesn't normally find in a school environment, so no one knew about it? Tsuna is suddenly overtaken with the desperate urge to know, and it's somehow more important than killing the man who would dare trample over an existence as superb as Hibari's.

Hibari staggers to his feet, letting out steadying breaths that Tsuna can hear the smile on. The tension in his chest has been reduced to a gibbering wreck, only spawning sickness and terror. Zeni follows Tsuna's gaze, looking only idly curious. This is a mistake that proves his weakness.

Hibari finally looks up.

On his face is a perfect closed-eye smile, the kind that's formed in the soft pressing of warmth before a grin, frozen in a snapshot of twisted pleasantry.

Tsuna is overtaken with a sudden, visceral urge to end his own life.

The tension in his chest becomes a tension in his entire body, and he leaps back with the instincts of an animal in the presence of a predator. Every survival instinct ingrained in Tsuna tells him to run away, not just from the battleground, but the country, the entire planet. It's not the fear of repercussion, not the fear of the unknown, it's worse, it's the fear of a threat beyond human imagining. The killing intent radiating off of Hibari is pressure unlike anything he's ever felt, and his base instincts and internal intuition are both telling him to either  _run_  or  _end it all before Hibari can get to you._

"Bite him again," Hibari says.

Tsuna pounces on Zeni without a second thought.

His teeth go straight for the closest piece of exposed skin, Zeni's free hand. Unfortunately, Zeni is using the clawed hand to hold his neck, so Tsuna can't bite it right off his finger. He does, however, latch onto the stretchy skin around the knuckles, and he has to grind his teeth and use both hands to pull at the arm to get it to tear. The wound isn't nearly as bad as the one on his neck, and no skin or flesh comes off when Tsuna is kicked away, but it's still a wound.

Tsuna looks a little hysterically at Hibari, desperate for orders, a reason to go, a reason to stay.

Hibari Kyouya is standing tall, the polite, doll-like smile still fixated on his face. Slowly, like the sun rising on the horizon, he opens his eyes, and views the world like he's seeing it for the first time. Tsuna thinks of a god smiling upon all that he rules, knowing that any entity that stands against him will soon have no choice but to kneel.

Then his hands catch on fire.

" _YES_ ," Tsuna screams.

Zeni looks at the blazing hands with wide eyes. Tsuna can't tell if he's pale with shock or blood loss, but it seems the unstoppable pressure Hibari has been emitting up until now has finally gotten through his thick skull. "You...how...without a conduit...how could you manifest so much…?"

"You called them 'Flames'," Hibari states, like this is obvious.

Takeshi claimed that the Flames were related to  _willpower,_  and Hibari is the most willful human being in the history of man. If Hibari sees something he wants called 'Flames', then by god, he'll exert all of his energy into producing it himself using nothing more than unstoppable intent and sheer contrariness, which happens to be the exact thing needed to create them. It kind of  _is_ obvious. Tsuna isn't sure why he didn't predict this the moment he learned of the existence of all this magic shit. Tsuna's own powers activate when he's lost the will to live, same principle.

Hibari's face finally relaxes along with his posture, and he blinks like he had been in a very, very dark place and is just getting used to seeing sunlight again. He flicks his arm, watching the fire enveloping his hand carefully. It's a deep violet-purple, and seems to be coming off in thin, unstable whisps of flame, only to randomly thicken and spit out a series of fiery blobs. It's like looking at the hellfire version of a lava lamp.

"Those are Cloud Flames," Tsuna says helpfully. According to Hayato's chart, purple means growth, but Hayato didn't specificy what 'growth' means.

Hibari gives Tsuna a warning look that promises that they are going to have Words after this. And by Words, he means a beating. He's going to beat up Tsuna.

Tsuna finds himself oddly charmed.

"They look different," Hibari muses, flicking his other arm with an expression of slight dissatisfaction.

"Yeah, I…I don't know what yours do," Tsuna admits sheepishly.

 _"And I'm not letting you find out,"_  Zeni roars. He aims the claw at Hibari, but Hibari has, at this point, converted his torture into strength, and his strength into fire. He easily dodges out of the way, and dives after Zeni with a blaze that envelops his tonfas as well. He pulls back to strike, and Zeni staggers in an attempt to dodge, but then Hibari pivots, spins, and brings his other arm slamming down into Zeni's side, the tonfa sinking into his torso like a beast's fang sinking into the meat of its prey.

Tsuna can  _hear_  the man's ribcage shatter.

Hibari doesn't give Zeni an opportunity to so much as react to the damage. He pivots again, and another fang sinks into Zeni's leg, and Tsuna can see a flicker of white puncture his pant leg. Again, and the shoulderblade gives a sickening crack as it is reduced to dust. Again, both silver teeth driven into Zeni's stomach like the firing of a bullet. The man hits the ground and spits out a thick mixture of blood and vomit, and for an instant, Tsuna sees afterimages of Hibari's arms, soft drifting echoes that seem to create a belated mirror of the strikes Hibari is delivering. He's never seen anything like it. It's  _beautiful._

The assault's climax rises with a light peppering of impacts that exist only to prolong the man's torturous end, followed by the pair of tonfas rising, then another pair of tonfas rising farther in an unstable, flickering reflection, and all four come down on Zeni's head, caving it in like all that was keeping it intact was a thin layer of wet tissue paper.

The flames flicker out of existence.

Hibari looks at Tsuna, mouth set in a hard line.

Tsuna looks at Hibari, gaping like a fish.

Then Hibari smiles serenely, with his usual air of self-congratulatory confidence, and his killing intent dies away into nothing more than its usual dull hum.

"My first kill. I like it."

Tsuna's mouth closes with a small 'click'. He feels reality skitter back into place. He still feels kind of drunk.

"Even mine wasn't a mafia boss."

"Of course it wasn't. Cleaning up for me is your job." Hibari steps over Zeni's body towards Tsuna, and Tsuna unconsciously leans towards him in anticipation. With a flick of the wrists, the tonfas retract into their compact form, and he slides them into his hoodie pockets with the practiced ease of a gunman in an old western sliding his revolvers into their holsters. And he freezes.

He takes out the gun.

Then, without dropping his serene smile, he turns around and unloads six bullets into Zeni's crumpled skull. The sound of each bullet firing echoes through the air. It's loud enough to make Tsuna's ears ring. He finds himself even more charmed, somehow.

Hibari discards the gun and exhales with obvious satisfaction. It feels like Tsuna is being granted permission to breathe too, and he takes greedy gulps of air, now that the threat — and the subsequent tension — has passed. He realizes he was dizzy from holding it for too long, but he honestly hadn't noticed. Tsuna isn't sure if that's from the alcohol or how magnetic Hibari is in this moment.

Hibari walks up to him confidently, practically spinning ominous latin chanting out of thin air with each step, his magnificent presence painfully familiar, but not particularly comforting. He stops before Tsuna, looks down on him, but not as one would look down on an insect, or even a loyal subject. Tsuna cannot actually understand the look Hibari is giving him right now. He think he might start laughing out of sheer panic.

Hibari crouches down, takes the hem of Tsuna's bloodstained dress with delicate fingers, and wipes it across Tsuna's mouth, mopping up the blood. Hibari's eyes widen a bit at the sight of his own actions. Tsuna stares bug-eyed at him, desperately wanting some sort of indication of familiarity at this point.

Hibari drags a crimson corner against Tsuna's face again, and narrows his eyes in apparent satisfaction. He drops the fabric deliberately, making sure Tsuna sees that he has completed his task.

"Get changed," Hibari says.

Tsuna runs like the four horseman of the apocalypse are right behind him.

 

* * *

 

Kyouya is in a truly legendary amount of pain, and he takes the Secretary's flight as an opportunity to collapse to the ground and accept that.

Flames calling on him is a nice way to put it. They burnt through what remained of his energy. Still, he barely needed the Secretary's assistance beyond breaking that shield, and that means Kyouya has  _Won_.

It also means that he owes the Secretary something. This bothers him. He's already eliminated the threat, and the Secretary seems occupied with serving him even more than he has already. He doesn't know the Secretary's interests, beyond being unfathomable and mildly irritating.

Kyouya coughs a few times and clutches his temples. The echoes of being thrown into a small mountain are fading, but his head is throbbing again. He screws his eyes shut and tries to even out his breathing.

_He_ _'s Won._

It's the first time he's ever fought someone even approaching Father, and he crushed his skull in. He was ground into the dirt and he rose above and destroyed him and he's never felt more powerful in his  _life_. A deranged laugh clears his throat, and he coughs it away, not liking the lack of control over his own muscles it causes. Also, it hurts.

When he feels like he can stand without toppling over again, Kyouya gets up and picks the suitcase and blade off the ground. Then he takes the claw off the corpse. The tachi and the claw ring go into the suitcase, which is housing two other blades that seem to be from the same set, a circlet shaped like a dragon, and five red bullets.

Kyouya takes the suitcase and returns to the entryway. The Secretary is in his boxers, and gulping down a bottle of saké with the black dog in his lap. The blood-caked wig sits in a tangle at his feet, which Kyouya likes, because it's confusing, ugly, and implies a level of deception Kyouya finds inherently unpleasant.

"Disobedience," Kyouya says flatly, and without heat.

The bottle parts from the Secretary's lips with a little  _pop_ , and he lifts the bottle to Kyouya as his tongue slides over his lips.

Kyouya blinks slowly. He feels he could understand if his head didn't feel like it was being split into two.

"Want some?" The Secretary clarifies.

Kyouya shakes his head. "I don't drink."

The Secretary's mouth tilts up. "If you 'don't drink', that means something happens when you do, right?"

Kyouya's lips pull, but the grimace has no real malice behind it either. He's in too good a mood to find the Secretary's usual annoyances bothersome. "I don't like depressants."

"Oh." The Secretary scratches idly at Hatachi's neck. He's watching him; Kyouya can feel the Secretary's eyes on him even when he isn't looking. Kyouya isn't good at reading faces, and he can't place the Secretary's expression at all. Very flat, maybe. His eyes aren't tracking quite right. Like a cat's stare. Kyouya almost expects him to start chattering.

The Secretary closes his eyes for a moment, to card his fingers through his hair and ruffle it until it comes out of its weakly-gelled bindings. Kyouya should lend him Tetsuya's product.

Then he blinks.

He takes a step forward and presses his sneaker into Tsuna's face. Tsuna glances at him with a bizarre lack of fear, for how overwhelmed with it he was barely fifteen minutes ago.

"Dying your hair?"

"I was always dying my hair. This is what it looks like naturally."

It's just annoying enough for Hibari to give up on self-control and kick the Secretary in the skull.

Definitely not hard enough, with the way he laughs,  _hard,_ and with not nearly enough air. It sounds like nose-cackling. Kyouya weighs the pros and cons of kicking him again before he decides he just doesn't care enough to bother.

The Secretary doesn't get up, just keeps drinking and knocking his knees together, still staring at Kyouya with those unreadable black eye—

" _Contacts."_

The Secretary cackles again. "It's not! It's not. They changed when I got the ability, is all. You didn't notice?"

"You were in disguise."

"Ah, too bad. You sure you don't want any?" The Secretary sits up with an exaggerated swivel.

Kyouya's brow furrows. "You're already drunk."

"Ah, I, hm. Already had two bottles, y'know?"

Kyouya takes the bottle and frowns deeply at the Secretary, who inexplicably starts giggling again, covering his red face with his bruised hands.

Kyouya was going to die. He was going to die if the Secretary hadn't bitten that man. It was the purest form of following him Kyouya has ever seen, it was obscene, and now he's seriously considering if life debts are a factor in this.

He doesn't  _want_ to owe the Secretary a life debt. He's disrespectful and Kyouya doesn't even really like him all that much. Kyouya wants to owe life debts to people like Tetsuya. This is terrible.

The Secretary dumps a bottle of water over his own head, wipes his face with the back of his dress, and pulls a white tank top with a black cutout print of a car driving past palm trees adorning it. His fingers trace along the hem of bright orange cargo shorts as he continues watching Kyouya.

After a second, he passes the water bottle over. Kyouya takes that too, and splashes it over his face. The gunshot wound stings.

He looks down. The Secretary is still staring, this time with wider eyes. His face is flushed, but most of his skin is unblemished, so it seems to be nerves rather than an unhealthy buildup of aceltaldehyde. Kyouya tends to associate faces like this with fear, and he feels uncomfortable with the possibility that he might be wrong. The Secretary is  _always_  scared, it's very easy to pick up on. This is not one of those times.

Then the Secretary breaks eye contact and puts on the shorts. Hatachi wanders over to lick the water dripping from the water bottle in Kyouya's hand. Kyouya drops it, and looks at the bottle of rice wine. It's large. If the Secretary already had two, there is absolutely no way he didn't go into that fight completely inebriated.

"Stupid," Kyouya mutters.

"Are you going to drink it?"

More staring. Very catlike. The predatory eyes of a housepet.

A burst of laughter escapes his mouth before he can stop it, and Kyouya holds his hand to his mouth. It's an irritant, laughter, because the longer he lets it happen, the harder to control it gets. But again, he can't really bring himself to care, and he lets the smile settle on his lips anyway.

The Secretary tilts his head.

Kyouya is rapidly starting to realize that maybe the Secretary's expression can't be read because he doesn't  _have_  one.

…He finds it hard to care. The Secretary has always been extremely hard to read, and Kyouya hasn't been very bothered with the fact until now. He feels good and the Secretary tore out a man's throat with his teeth in Kyouya's name. He does not care about a  _lot_  of things, at the moment.

Kyouya tilts his head back and starts chugging.

The Secretary cackles again, clapping his hands together in obvious delight. Kyouya doesn't like depressants, but he finds the sensation of heat traveling down through his core decent enough, and since he's going to bed anyway, the sleepiness it will cause seems like a trivial thing.

Oh, yes. He hasn't slept in days. That's a problem.

Kyouya wipes his face with what little of his hoodie sleeve isn't splattered in blood. "I'm not in the mood to head home."

"That's okay. You don't have to.  _Hibari-san_." There is a pressure on his name.

Kyouya pulls off his hoodie. He frowns at the injuries — from both Father and that man — peppering the pale skin of his arms. He's going to have to wear the gakuran more to hide them. Pity. It gets stuffy in warm weather.

Kyouya looks down again. He judges the wide eyes, excited flush, the poorly-tracking stare, its similarity to fear. His gaze flicks around the room as he tries to parse it.

Aha.

He smiles, and strangely, feels even better. The pride feels warm and strong inside him. "I've impressed you."

The Secretary crooks his brow and lets out an airless chuckle against the back of his hand. "I've…I've always been impressed? Hibari-san."

"Respect me more, then." Kyouya takes another swig and kicks the Secretary in the arm. The Secretary flops over and breaks down into a fit of uncontrollable giggles again. Kyouya frowns. "You've drunken too much. Underage, as well. If you drank in Namimori, that's three limbs broken."

"Geez! Break them then! I deserve it, right?  _Tanto va la gatta al lardo che ci lascia lo zampino_!" The Secretary grins.

Kyouya's mouth ticks up at the fluent accent. He is almost positive the Secretary does not actually know Italian, so the sheer level of competency he delivers the idiom with is amusing. "The cat that takes the bacon too often will lose its paw," he translates.

"Ah! You know Italian, Hibari-san?" Delighted again. A drunken Secretary is exceptionally easy to please. It cheapens the glory of battle, but Kyouya still likes the attention.

"I'm fluent in several languages. I'm politically important; it's a necessity."

"Uwaaaa. Hibari-san so cool," the Secretary giggles.

"Move. I need to get changed too."

The Secretary scoots back on his behind obediently, still staring. Kyouya glances at him speculatively. The Secretary has exhibited a level of loyalty Kyouya only wished he got from anyone other than the Kusakabe family, and there's no hint of pride to call Kyouya's decision into question. Actually giving the boy the respect he deserves shouldn't be hard, even if Kyouya doesn't like him.

Still feels strange though.

He picks a powder blue tank top from the bag. It's got a yellow chick stitched on the chest pocket.

"…Tsunayoshi."

Sawada Tsunayoshi goes ramrod straight. That expression  _is_  fear. Kyouya loses all hesitation. Names are a good decision.

"No Pygmy Hippo?" Tsunayoshi asks approximately two octaves too high to be natural.

"I'll call you that too, if you'd like," Kyouya smirks. Tsunayoshi slides away from him.

"How many people do you refer by first name…"

"Tetsuya. Hiraku. Yumiko."

"Who…?"

"The Kusakabe family." Kyouya pulls off his shirt. Tsunayoshi immediately starts sliding back in again. "They raised me. I have respect for this."

"So am I on the level of family, now?"

"You saved my life." Kyouya pulls the shirt on. "I don't like it."

"Thassss…nnnot! What you say to someone who saved your life!"

Kyouya reaches over and grabs Tsunayoshi by the nose until he starts whining in pain. "I'm not going to  _thank you_  for  _doing your job_. I should punish you for doing it so  _poorly_."

"I am…very drunk," Tsunayoshi mumbles.

"Yes. I can tell." Kyouya pulls off his pants and trades them out for white half-pants that have a lot of pockets. He doesn't know what he'll need all those pockets for, but it feels practical. He bundles up all the blood-soaked clothes into a ball, and digs around the bag for a space to put them in.

"…Did I do okay? Hibari-san," Tsunayoshi slurs.

"You did." His fingers graze cold metal.

"It doesn't…it doesn't feel like it. I was…I was so…Hibari-san, I was so  _angry_." His voice wobbles with tears. It's quite possibly the most herbivorous thing Tsunayoshi has done in the entire time Kyouya has known him. "I was so, so angry. I wanted to kill him. I've never felt like that. Hibari-san, I can't…I cccaaaan't feel like that, Hibari-san, because, because y'know, I don't have feelings? I don't have them."

"Of course you have feelings," Kyouya snorts. He pulls the object from the bag. It's a pair of scissors.

"I don't. They all know about it. How many feelings I don't have." Tsunayoshi hiccups. "I don't feel anything. I got…I got to be very violated a lot, Hibari-san, and I didn't care. On account. Of no feelings."

Kyouya glances over his shoulder. Tsunayoshi is staring off into space with damp eyes. Hasn't started crying yet. " _…'Violated'_."

"I was so  _mad_ ," Tsunayoshi whispers. "You're not supposed to…you're not supposed to know…feel…stuff like that…not like I did. I was so mad, Hibari-san. You can't be like me. You can't be…you're not allowed tttto…uh…to be, violated, n' end up like me. Like…very…Dame. Dame-Hibari. That's not you."

"If the title 'Dame-Tsuna' were accurate, I never would have hired you."

"You don't understand what it's…it's so…it's like something secret got br…got broke?" Tsunayoshi gestures sloppily to his chest. The third bottle is definitely getting to him. "Nnnnnnnthen, everything's. Broke. All around me. Everything about me's so broke. I'm really…Dame. You know. But it feels like something secret broke, and I dunno how much of that is why everything else isn't…isn't working any. Nothing in me works but maybe something secret breaking means I'll be broken forever?"

He is very,  _very_  drunk.

Kyouya examines the scissors speculatively. Tsunayoshi is gibbering especially sad nonsense now, but he had a point about the violation.

"But I don't want t…tttoooo find out. I think I was okay when just the normal bits didn't…work…good. Feels bad now. Feels bad." Tsunayoshi mumbles into his hands. Still hasn't started crying. Kyouya wonders if Tsunayoshi was actually trying to get across a legitimate point.

"You've been doing well, lately, haven't you?"

"Feels wet, sometimes." Tsunayoshi swallows thickly. "Hands. Feels wet."

"Wet?"

"Can…Can feel it. How much blood is on my hands." Tsunayoshi lets out a thin sob. "It wouldn't go in all the way so I had to keep doing it. I had to keep going and there was so much it kept slipping? Slipping out of my hands? And I thought he was going to get up and strangle me even though i-i-it went in so many times?"

Kyouya turns all the way to look at him. "What kept slipping?"

"The knife," Tsunayoshi wails. "It went into his head so many times but I thought he'd grab me if I stopped. M'chest hurt, so bad, and I thought he'd grab me and I had to make s-sure, and now my hands feel wet all the time? It just feels like all, every, they're kinda collapsing in on each other and now everything feels  _bad_. The internet says it's not going to…you can't cure, or anything, you just have to feel bad forever? I don't wanna.  _I don_ _'t wanna._ "

Kyouya doesn't remember if Tsunayoshi had told him about any murders he may have committed in his absence, beyond the fact murders had occurred. It seems like something he would do.

"Good job," he says stiffly.

Tsunayoshi looks at him with that flat look again.

"It's happening forever. I don't want anyone to know how broke I got," he mumbles. "Because it happened a lot at once. I just want to go away now."

"You're going to bed."

"Hibari-san. Hibari-san I gotta go away now. I gotta…I —  _hic_  — I gotta go," Tsunayoshi insists.

"Bed." Kyouya picks him up by the collar and starts dragging him off, bag, suitcase, and wad of bloody clothing and all.

"I don't wanna be bad forever, I want mama," Tsunayoshi says even quieter.

"I'm not bringing you back to Namimori."

"Okay," Tsunayoshi says very sadly. "I'll go away forever."

Kyouya is overwhelmed with the urge to slap him, but he rationalizes that Tsunayoshi will only start bawling if he tries it.

"Go to sleep."

"Mhm…mmggh…go to sleep forever."

"No."

"Sleep. I'm very bad."

"You're going to sleep off the alcohol."

"I'm so bad, Hibari-san. I'm going to sleep forever." Tsunayoshi hides his face in his wrists. "Everyone will feel better."

"You're not listening to me."

"I want to die."

Kyouya gives up using words and flips Tsunayoshi over so he can shove his face into the ground.

It feels like ice.

He whips his hand away and reconsiders the nonsense pouring from the Secretary's mouth. He hadn't asked what caused the ability, but the signs are there. Even as Tsunayoshi slurs out sobbing assertions of how great it would be to be dead, the same grey-black substance that came from his wounds is seeping from his temples.

"Tsunayoshi."

"No, don't…I'm bad at helping? No."

The substance — his Flames — only rises from those two points, on either side of his forehead. They rush forward, and then drift apart like dissipating smoke.

They look like the horns of a devil fading into the sky.

"Why can't you do that on command?" Kyouya complains.

"Dame, TTtttsssuuuuunaaaaaa," Tsunayoshi insists.

Hatachi barks and tries to lick the horns off. It doesn't really work, but it does attract Tsunayoshi's attention. The Secretary looks down at the dog and makes simpering noises. "Dog! I love you, you're a good doggie. You're such a good doggie? You're so nice to me. I want to be good for you. I love you. You're a…a good puppy, Hatachi, why are you so good? Kisss….Kisses. Kissies! Kissies! I'm gonna! I wanna give you kissies too! I love them I will give you some? Kiiiiiiissssssssss."

Tsunayoshi muzzles his face into the dog's neck and makes kissing noises. Kyouya stares at the ceiling. He is never letting another human being save his life for the rest of time. It simply isn't worth it.

He drops the bags, draws himself up, tries to bring himself to look at Tsunayoshi's ugly, crying kissy face, and picks the boy up by the hips. He is tiny and thin, and Kyouya is about average height and muscular. It is a foregone conclusion. Tsunayoshi gives up and waves his arms around at Hatachi, who follows Kyouya down the hallway.

"Bed," Kyouya says darkly, and chucks Tsunayoshi into one of the abandoned futons in the sleeping room. "No talking."

"I love talking. Don't do it very much."

Kyouya places his sneaker on Tsunayoshi's mouth and glares.

Tsunayoshi goes limp. Kyouya pulls the next futon in close and lays down himself. He slips his hand into Tsunayoshi's freezing fingers and enjoys the sensation of smoothness. It's a balm against his rising irritation.  _If only it didn_ _'t come from the source._

"M'sorry, Hibari-san," Tsunayoshi says softly.

Kyouya glances at him. The horns are gone. Hatachi is sitting on Tsunayoshi's neck and panting heavily into his ear. Every so often the dog will lick it. Tsunayoshi doesn't react.

Kyouya slowly pushes the dog off with his free hand. "Sleep."

"Okay."

"You'll wake up."

"Okay."

"You won't die."

"Okay."

"I revoke all death permissions."

Tsunayoshi looks very sad.

"O…okay."

He falls asleep in what seems like seconds, leaving Kyouya to glare at him and wish he could strangle him. His heart just isn't into it. He knows it's because he's so close to Tsunayoshi right now, but also, the serenity is growing on him, and he doesn't want to leave it just yet.

Predicaments.

The sleep deprivation and alcohol catches up with Kyouya, and he falls asleep soon after.

 

* * *

 

Wakefulness comes with a phone ringing insistently somewhere far away.

Kyouya opens his eyes.

He looks down.

There are arms around his torso and everything stinks vaguely of saké.

…Feels nice.

He brings his hand down on Tsunayoshi's face on principle and uses it to push himself upright. Tsunayoshi makes vaguely disapproving noises, but doesn't wake. Hatachi is curled up in a ball on Tsunayoshi's stomach, and doesn't stir either when Kyouya stands. The bright calmness parts like a layer of cobwebs from his mind, but he still feels like he's in a relatively good mood. Good way to feel when he wakes up. He likes it.

He pads to the main room, yawning. It's dark out, but that doesn't tell him anything about the time. He'll probably go back to bed, where everything feels pleasant. The pressure of Tsunayoshi laying on him reminds him of the pressure of hiding in the closet as a small child, only it's an insolent underling who doesn't know how to keep his hands to himself, and he'll have to break both his arms when they're both awake enough to talk about wanton disrespect of his boundaries, or something. Once again, he feels torn between how little he likes Tsunayoshi and how much he likes living unbothered by what he supposes are his Flames.

He eventually finds the source of the noise; a phone inside Tsunayoshi's jacket. He answers it with another yawn. "Hello?"

"Where's the abomination child?" High voice. Sounds a little like Kyouya's great-uncle. Kyouya hates the person on the other end on principle. He has very good principles.

"Very drunk. I'm his employer."

"Employer."

"He's  _mine,_ " Kyouya clarifies sharply.

"You're the one the child was holding hands with before," the baby-voice deduces. "That's fine. I'm hiring it."

"What."

"You're familiar with those abilities the child possesses, do you not?"

"Yes." Kyouya walks back to the futon room, where his bed waits for him. Why on earth is he still wearing shoes?

"Our company requires them. We need it here within three days. This isn't a suggestion."

"Fine."

"Will you be accompanying?"

Three days is probably long enough for Father to leave. Kyouya has only just developed his trump card, and he's actually a bit worried he might show his hand too soon now that he has one at all. Staying away from Namimori is has an active benefit to him, now. "…Yes."

"We won't be paying you."

"That won't be a problem."

"…Mu…I see. We'll be sending a helicopter to take you to the jet. Where will we pick you up?"

Kyouya glances out the window. "Boat on the water off the edge of Miyazawa's beach. Overlooking the main street."

"The helicopter will arrive shortly."

"Where's the job?"

There's silence on the other end. Kyouya uses it to pack.

"…Italy. The Abomination is being hired by the leaders of the Varia."

Kyouya stops packing.

He stares down the hall, where Tsunayoshi is still sleeping.

"Excellent," he says, malice creeping into his town, _"he'll definitely be there."_

Kyouya ends the call, and loads the boat up with their bags. Then he rolls up the futon, and loads the boat up with Tsunayoshi. He drives it out of the scope of the haze of unreality, parks it by the small outcropping, and glares daggers at Tsunayoshi until he hears the beat of the helicopter.

When the ladder comes down, so does Kyouya's foot on Tsunayoshi's ribs.

Tsunayoshi rubs his eyes and squints up at him. "Mmmuhh?"

" _ **You,"**_ Kyouya booms even over the helicopter,  _ **"have got some explaining to do."**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanted to get to a lot of things and I ended up getting to approximately zero of them because this arc was going on WAY too long and I wanted to end it on the transition point to the primary arc of the next book (Hibari And Tsuna Just Fuck Off To The Varia For A While) so THAT'S THE END OF DET Y'ALL!


	33. The Recovery of Normality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter exclusive to the 10/8/2017 edit, dedicated to Namimori. THE FINISHER

The bus screeching a halt at the Namimori station feels like a book closing on an unwanted story.

Hana steps off and tastes air with barely any sea on it. Most of the Koyama students look confused and tired. She steps forward and presses her forehead against a cool support beam just to feel it. They’re out. They’ve left. It’s all over.

Hayato fishes out the wheelchair from the bus storage and brings it up once the students have left to get Ryouhei out. Hana watches the crowd cluster around the luggage bay, and then disperse to the four winds. Eventually, only about four other kids from Koyama remain, including Uenohara Suzu. She’s carrying two bags. Hana recognizes one of them.

“He was with you?” Hana laughs.

Suzu blinks at her for a second, and then passes her Tsuna’s bag.

“…Thanks.”

Ryouhei is unloaded, and Gokudera takes his bag and books it. Likely has something to do with the guy that tried to pull him back. Hana goes over to wait next to Ryouhei.

“You’re not going to hide this from Kyouko, are you?” Hana asks.

“Not all of it,” Ryouhei admits grudgingly.

“Okay.”

They sit in silence until they’re the only people off the Miyazawa bus left. Even Shouichi leaves with a strained look.

“Are you worried about him?”

“Of course.” Ryouhei’s fist clenches tightly. “I should have been there for him. He never would have been hurt if it weren’t for me. Kyouko asked me to watch over him, and I couldn’t.”

“Kyouko asked me to watch him too.” Hana stares at the brightly-lit afternoon road. “We both suck.”

Ryouhei bows his head.

“But I suck more. If you weren’t there, Oogawa would have died.” Hana fidgets a little. “Shouichi-kun too. I don’t think you could have protected us from the guy Tsuna… _you know_. But you did more than anyone else could. You know how the third guy went out? An adult, with a _gun_.”

“But I still feel responsible,” Ryouhei says.

“Mm.”

Kurokawa Hana and Sasagawa Ryouhei, normally distant, sit together in a unified sense of guilt, watching a new bus come in, and all the people untethered to what happened yesterday morning, going about their day. A cool breeze that doesn’t manage to penetrate the muggy air blows by. Hana’s hair rustles.

“Onii-saaaaaaaaan!”

They both whip their heads up. Kyouko is running towards them, waving wildly.

“Kyouko,” said Ryouhei breathes.

“Ugh, it’s worse than you said it would be!” Kyouko bounces around his wheelchair, inspecting his wounds. “How long do you think it’ll take to heal? Do you need a hospital? No? Want me to make you a protein shake or something? I’ve been keeping up with my training regimen and drinking them by myself. Mom and dad still think it’s funny.”

Ryouhei blinks, and then gives her a big tough-guy smile. “Whatever you make is bound to be delicious!”

“Okay! Hana, are you okay to walk home by yourself? You’re not feeling too well, after all…” Kyouko leans over with a truly angelic level of concern. What a good girl.

Hana flashes a wan smile of her own. “I’m good!”

“…Well…If you say so. I have to cart Onii-san home, since he can’t use his upper body right now, but I’ll text you when I get home.” Kyouko circles over to the handlebars. “Okay to move?”

“Of course!” Ryouhei grits.

“Okay!” Kyouko slides his bag onto the bars and starts walking.

Hana stares at her feet until they’re gone.

Finally, she’s alone.

Now what? She’d look to Hayato, since he got a riot out of bossing them around, but he’s not here, and now that she’s thinking about it, she’s pretty sure he doesn’t even own a cellphone. Dumb bastard.

Feeling a little despondent, she fires a pessimistic text to Tsuna, grabs her bag, and heads home.

  


* * *

 

 

Hayato stands in front of the Sawada household for far longer than he should before he drums up the willpower to knock on the door. He sort of spaces out gazing at the woodgrain waiting for the worst.

Nana answers. “Hayato-kun!”

“ _Mamma_ ,” Hayato starts, and bites his tongue, wondering if Iemitsu might have a problem with that level of familiarity.

“Guess what! Tsuna’s papa is here!”

“…Really!” Hayato squeaks.

“Come in, come in.” Nana makes Hayato take off his shoes and carts him over to the sitting room, where Iemitsu is frowning into a cupboard.

“Honey, didn’t I leave a few wines here?”

“Oh, they were going to go bad anyway. Come and meet Hayato-kun, dear, you’ve been wanting to, haven’t you?”

Iemitsu stands and looks Hayato over. He’s traded out his suit for a loose-fitting t-shirt and jeans, and he’s smeared with dirt for some ungodly reason. Hayato can feel his heart in his throat. His mouth twitches with a weak attempt at a smile.

“H…Hey. Been…a while.”

“It has!” Iemitsu leans against the table. “Nice of you to help Tsuna meet friends. I’m sure he’ll be hale and hearty when he comes home from his _sleep-over_ , won’t he?”

“He’s bringing home a dog!” Nana chirps.

“He’s what?” Hayato chokes.

Iemitsu frowns. “When did he tell you that?”

“Oh, just two or three hours ago! He sounded excited.”

That had to be around the time Hana called him up. Must be the animal he was shushing. “I didn’t know he wanted a pet.”

“He’s such a lonely child, I’m not surprised. Let me put the tea on.” Nana bustles into the kitchen, leaving Hayato alone with Iemitsu, totally unprepared. Hayato gives him a wary look.

“…Sir.”

“Sit down.”

Hayato sits down.

“First of all…this _boss_ business.”

“It was just— Tsuna was worried about gangs harassing him! Not the— not the one he’s in. Other gangs.” Hayato rubs his hands over his face. “Not bad gangs! School kids. In gangs. He just wanted me to clean things up for him, is all, and he said I could uh, protect him. Keep him out of trouble.”

“Fat lot of good you’ve done in the meantime,” Iemitsu says.

Hayato flinches back like he’s been struck, grits his teeth, and tries to look at Iemitsu head on. He only manages to keep his eyes fixed on the man’s nose. “I’m sorry, was I somehow supposed to know that the local yakuza, who are supposed to _like_ him, in fact, in fact I explicitly _know_ they like him, were about to get wiped out by the world’s most unkillable mafioso? _Did you?_ ”

“I’m not blaming you for Miyazawa, Hayato. I’m asking about what you’ve lied about.”

“Nothing!” Iemitsu makes a questioning noise. “…Some things! Very, very few things. He’s my boss and I listen to him, alright?”

“I specifically sent him because he’s become the type person who isn’t safe to listen to,” Iemitsu argues.

“How the hell do _you_ know?” Hayato glares as fiercely as he can at Iemitsu’s nose, tries to drown out his panic by channeling all of Tsuna’s resentment towards this man. Tsuna hates him so much he’d prefer to replace him with _Hayato_. Hayato’s opinion of himself isn’t good enough to believe that could mean anything except that Iemitsu is an awful, awful, no-good parent.

“You’ve seen how much intel is covering him.”

“I-It doesn’t mean anything! Ts-Tsuna’s…he’s a good guy! Someone watching him do—do shit, can’t, they can’t, it’s not accurate enough to tell! He cares about others! He’s worried about a lot of things! He’s smarter, I mean…I mean, he’s not that bright, but he’s better with people than you would think! He’s a problem-solver!” Hayato tilts his chin defiantly, adjusting his sweaty hands.

Iemitsu sighs and leans his head on one hand. “Who are these people that he’s so good at working with?”

“ _Friends,”_ Hayato says rebelliously, but then realizes that won’t really fly. “Just like it says. That Sasagawa girl. And her friend. And the baseball guy.”

“’ _Baseball guy’,_ ” Iemitsu mouths. His eyes light up. “Yamamoto, that was the fourth boy.”

“Yeah, and all he knows is that he’s gotta watch the Boss’ ass, so don’t go bothering him, either. I mean, not that it would matter. He’s sick as hell, probably wouldn’t get a word out of him.” Hayato scratches his head. He’ll have to check and see if Yamamoto’s made it home safe, but it occurs to him that he doesn’t have his home address. He’ll have to go harass Sasagawa for it.

“Sick,” Iemitsu presses.

“Went into shock,” says Hayato, which isn’t really a lie. That’s pretty much the gist of both states he was in.

“Any other friends?”

“That so-called ‘gang’ he’s in? It’s just his school committee. He was feeding you bullshit. So like…Intel my _ass_.” Hayato flushes and folds his arms. He’s almost managing eye-contact. Boss would be so proud.

“As opposed to the other gang he had you dispose of?”

“They belong to me now.”

“You were sent to get him out of a gang, and you _started_ a gang?”

“No, I started a _student council,_ which I am the _president_ of, and this weekend, we’re all going to have fun renovating the fucking school, and it’ll be _fun,_ ” Hayato growls.

Iemitsu gives him a disbelieving look. Hayato looks at the table, then his lap, then behind him to check on Nana. At a loss, he looks back to Iemitsu. “Well? Is that all?”

“The Kouyou boy.”

“His name is _Oogawa_ Miki, he’s not Kouyou _anything_ , and he’s my _vice president_ , and you’re going to _leave him alone_ ,” Hayato snaps irritably. He can’t believe Iemitsu is such a piece-of-shit meddler.

Iemitsu raises his eyebrows. “Irie Shouichi?”

“Kurokawa’s Gun Kid. He fires guns, or some dumb shit like that, I don’t know. Kurokawa’s batshit teacher made him come. Leave him alone too!”

“Miura?”

“Which one?”

“Either.”

“Batshit teacher, some rando I’ve literally never met who showed up to hover around Kurokawa, probably because of the batshit teacher,” Hayato counts off with his fingers. “ _Now_ are we done?”

“I honestly doubt I’ll get anything more out of you at the moment, so fine,” Iemitsu sighs.

Hayato leaps to his feet and dashes into the kitchen to get out of the man’s general presence. There! Barely cracked! He’s fucking amazing! Just like a mafia man, will of fucking steel!

Nana is plucking teabags from their mugs, and has started preparing dinner. Hayato latches onto the possibility of a task to occupy himself with, and quickly washes his hands.

“Let me,” he says, and he quickly plucks a few veggies up and mixes them in the tempura batter she had already started on.

“Oh, Hayato-kun, already so good with your hands,” Nana cheers. “You’re better at using chopsticks than I am!”

“I ate a lot of Chinese stir-fry,” Hayato deflects, plopping the veggies into the pan.

“Still, not all your meals were Asian, I’m guessing. You’re a quick learner.” Nana scores the skin off the fatter eggplant and breaks the pepper up as Hayato tries to focus on the seafood.

“I-I, uhm. My mom was Japanese, so that might have something to. Do with that.” The shrimp shell crumbles in his trembling hands. Fuck.

“Oh, wonderful! Do you know when Tsuna’s coming home? We can cook something nice for him as a surprise!”

Hayato stares at his hands and wills them to stay still. They don’t listen.

“I…I don’t know if he’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Hm?”

“He…” Hayato tries to deshell another shrimp, with better success. “You know how, uhm, he sort of…disappears, sometimes, when he’s upset?”

Nana pauses in her work.

Shit.

“Did something happen?”

“Sasagawa fell off a cliff,” Hayato blurts, then hurriedly amends with “the older brother”, and then “he’s fine now.”

“Goodness, that must have given him a scare.”

“It did. And we spent the whole clean-up getting harassed by these asshole locals, and then a company took over from the volunteers, and it _sucked_ , and then earlier this morning he tells me about how he’s obsessed with avoiding people, and then, lo and behold, hiding at a friend’s with his _secret dog_.” He’s on the verge of tears by the time he finishes speaking, so he takes a deep breath and holds it to help fight them back.

“Hayato-kun…” Nana places a damp, slightly cold hand on his. “Come on. Look at me.”

Hayato almost doesn’t, but the weight of guilt makes him do it, just to punish himself. The expression on Nana’s face isn’t scornful though, only pitying, and slightly teary.

“It’s not your fault that Tsuna is like this.”

“I messed up his trip—”

Nana squeezes his hand. “Hayato. You didn’t mess up anything. There’s nothing you could have done. That’s why it’s so hard when he runs off. How often do you think he’s done it to me?”

Hayato had not actually thought of that. He knew Tsuna’s history with running away, but he hadn’t thought of who he was leaving behind. Tsuna clearly _adores_ his mother, but he still leaves.

He runs away because it’s a self-destructive habit. He said as much. He focused on people he adored when he talked about it.

“Does Tsuna care about me?” Hayato asks weakly, and then his teeth slam together when he realizes how completely pathetic and baby-ish and desperate that sounds out of context. “Because, he avoids— good things— when he’s unhappy, he runs away, but he’s running away from, stuff that he likes? But he left without telling me and— uh—”

“Hayato…” Nana holds a finger up to his chin so he’ll look at her. “He adores you. Isn’t that obvious?”

No?

His eyes prickle. _Of course not?_ The only one he can reliably say adores him is Bianchi, who he sort of hates. Tsuna doesn’t— he turned away from him, and— and he had to comfort him, because Hayato’s so fucking useless he couldn’t help Tsuna deal with the post-kill anxiety, when he should have, just like Bianchi helped Hayato deal with _his_ , Hayato has no right to adore Tsuna when he couldn’t even manage to— to—

“Hayato,” Nana whispers, and pulls him into a hug.

“I’m so fucking useless,” Hayato grits, not willing to hug back.

“You’re not.” She strokes his hair with damp hands. “Sometimes, you’re going to fail, and it makes you feel more terribly than anything, but if you’re there for him even a little bit, then you’re trying, and you can’t take that away from yourself. If you think you can try harder, you leave that for next time.”

“What if there’s no next time,” Hayato chokes, the image of Tsuna’s stab wound stark in his mind.

“Then you’ve done your best, and you’ll work twice as hard for the next person who needs it.”

Nana would need it. Hayato doesn’t know whether Tsuna is safe and coming back, and the lack of knowledge makes him sick, but the next person over is Nana. With trembling hands, he reaches up and tries his best to hug her back. It’s a new feeling for him.

He squeezes his eyes shut and tries his best to be intimate, if only for one moment in his life. It’s uneasy and he doesn’t think he likes it very much.

Then there’s a knock at the door.

 

* * *

 

Hana has been texting Kyouko the whole way home, and then some.

Kyouko plays along. While her brother tries to soothe their parent’s worries, and failing when he brings up the fact he cracked a slab of rock open with his skull (wow!), she responds to the flurry easily.

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_My parents don’t suspect a thing lmao_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_I can’t believe it, I thought Gokudera-kun was pushing it_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Right! I wish I wasn’t so flustered though, I don’t have anyone’s numbers lmao_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Gokudera doesn’t even have a phone because he’s a freak!!!!!!_

_**Kyouko - Ufufuu** _

_What kind of numbers :^)_

_**Hana - Ohoho?** _

_Who do u got…_

_**Kyouko - mwahaha** _

_People…_

_**Kyouko - ?** _

_Takeshi-kun isn’t in town????_

_**Hana - ??????** _

_Did you text him just now?_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_No he’s just not in town_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_gimme a sec_

Kyouko, confused now, fires off a quick text to Takeshi.

_**Kyouko - why aren’t you in town?** _

_Everyone else came back except for you?_

Which was premature, because by the time she’s sent it, Hana has provided an answer.

_**Hana - lol** _

_Got sick during the thing in the basin, doctor friend is watching him_

Which explains the following text,

_**Takeshi - I’m fine** _

_Glad you’re so worried about me, sweetheart ;)_

Which Kyouko responds to with,

_**Kyouko - >:^0** _

_Stay out of Takeshi-kun’s phone! Doctor creep!_

Which the doctor creep replies with,

_**Takeshi - A/S/L?** _

And Kyouko responds with,

_**Kyouko - >>:^0** _

_Invasion of privacy! This is probably breaking doctor laws!_

And the doctor replies with a picture of a pallid Takeshi asleep in a bathtub with a towel over his head and a disembodied hairy adult man hand held in a peace sign in front of him. Kyouko steams at her phone and fires a text at Hana.

_**Kyouko - >:^0** _

_I’m going to kill that doctor!!!!_

_**Hana - lol?** _

_Gokudera made him sound super trustworthy_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Then again, like, criminals_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_Why is Gokudera-kun letting criminals treat his friends! I’m going to kill Gokudera!!!!_

_**Hana - wwwwww** _

_I don’t think they’re even friends_

_**Kyouko - no!!!** _

_We are all friends!! And I am going to kill him! Where is he_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_Nvm he’s at Tsuna’s house_

_**Hana - ??** _

_How? Why?_

_**Kyouko - TTYL!** _

Kyouko abruptly stands. “Onii-san, I’m going out!”

“What?” Ryouhei jerks, and winces in pain from the effort. “Why?”

“I have to go yell at Gokudera for being irresponsible with his friends!” She pauses. “And give him some numbers, because he doesn’t have a cell phone.”

“Oh,” Sasagawa says slowly, then, “Uh, give ‘em my number too.”

“Will do!” Kyouko slips on her coat and runners and dashes out of the house.

Her house isn’t that far from the Sawada’s, only a few blocks away. She can tell Gokudera is there, as well as Tsuna’s mom, and…hm. Who on earth is that? Kyouko doesn’t recognize him at all.

_**Kyouko - ?** _

_Anyone come home with Gokudera?_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Huh?_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_Someone’s at Tsuna’s house_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Why in the hell is Gokudera at Tsuna’s house without Tsuna_

_**Kyouko - Ummmmmm** _

_Good question?_

Kyouko approaches the house nervously. There’s a orange jumpsuit hanging from the clothesline. She’s pretty sure the mystery person is in the sitting room right now. At this range, she can tell Gokudera isn’t very happy right now. She’ll try to go easy on him.

Kyouko gives the door a brisk knock. Her phone vibrates. It’s from Hana, in all hiragana.

_**Hana - DESCRIBE HIM** _

_DESCRIBE THE GUY AT TSUNA’S HOUSE_

The door opens to a tall, muscular blond man with facial hair, a little over six feet, and Tsuna’s dad.

“Excuse me,” Kyouko says sheepishly, turning back to her phone.

_**Kyouko - Describe how** _

_Tsuna’s dad_

_**Hana - WHAT** _

_HOW HE LOOKS??_

“U-Uhm, just give me a…” Kyouko glances up. While she was texting, Gokudera has dashed upstairs. Kyouko is pretty sure he’s going for a window. What is he doing! How is she supposed to give him phone numbers! And kill him!

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_Blond brown eyes unshaven big muscle_

“And you are…?” Tsuna’s dad leads.

“I’m— sorry,” she squeaks as Hana buzzes a reply, “I was in the middle of a conversation on the way here - I have unlimited texting - I’m Sasagawa Kyouko, Tsuna’s friend.”

“Tsuna isn’t here,” Tsuna’s dad says, but he’s more agreeable now.

“I know, I wanted to speak to Gokudera-kun—” Oh, darn, he’s left. He’s heading west. “Later! Why isn’t Tsuna here, by the way?”

“He’s…spending the night with a friend.”

This is a lie, which is odd, because Kyouko is _sure_ that friend ought to be Hibari, since that’s who he was with earlier. Which means…Tsuna’s dad knows what happened to Tsuna, but doesn’t know he’s with Hibari? What the heck? Why does Tsuna’s dad know that Tsuna isn’t with a friend so decisively, anyway?

“It’s okay. I’d love to visit with you and Mama-san,” Kyouko says politely, making sure to flutter her eyelashes girlishly.

“Well come right in,” Tsuna’s dad says, stepping away from the door.

Kyouko looks at her phone.

_**Hana - GET OUT OF THERE** _

_OMG KYOUKO HE’S IN THE MAFIAAAA_

_**Hana - TSUNA’S DAD IS IN THE MAFIA** _

_HE’S TOLD US THESE REAL FACTS_

_**Hana - MAFIA DAD** _

_HE CORNERED GOKUDERA BEFORE WE LEFT_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_IS GOKUDERA DEAD_

…Uh-oh!

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_Gokudera ran away. Why was Tsuna’s mafia dad in Miyazawa?_

“I’m surprised you didn’t go on the trip. I’ve heard so much about you,” Tsuna’s mafia dad says. Truth.

“I know. I planned the whole thing, and I had to cover for him so Hibari-senpai — the committee chairman? — didn’t punish him.”

“What do those punishments usually entail?”

“Uhm…Tsuna makes it sound like he’s really violent? But Hibari-senpai usually forces him to train with him. Tsuna really likes it, so I don’t think it’s a punishment, but I don’t think Hibari-senpai knows that.”

Tsuna’s dad looks her over as she sits down. She feels dizzy for a moment, and then over-exposed. She goes pale as it dawns on her that Tsuna’s dad has some sort of people-reading skill. Her phone buzzes.

“Chatty friend.”

Neither of them can lie.

“She’s a really fast texter!”

And Tsuna’s mafia dad doesn’t know that she knows when he’s lying.

Kyouko spares a glance at her phone.

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Tsuna’s mafia dad took over the clean-up because the yakuza were yelling at us_

_Uhm??_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Tsuna’s mafia dad’s mafia family owns land there and some archaeologist was trespassing and they found out lol_

Kyouko gasps, dramatically.

“Something wrong?”

“My brother has been…been _messing_ with me,” Kyouko grinds. “Just a second, I’m going to yell at him.”

She’d call him, if she didn’t have company. Kyouko isn’t sure Ryouhei can text in his state. Which denies him excuses!

_**Kyouko - Ryouhei!** _

_Mafia! In! Miyazawa! Yakuza also! I’m mad at you!_

Then the creepy doctor sends her an attachment. She looks at it, hoping it’s not something creepy. It isn’t; Takeshi is awake now, and staring listlessly at a piece of bread. There’s a ring of saturated blue around his wrist, and some sort of candy-red smear on his forehead.

_**Takeshi - boom** _

_Gokudera treated him by the way. I wasn’t here_

_**Kyouko - what!** _

_Yes you were! I will find out who you are and tell everyone you are a doctor and a bad person! Who violates the privacy! Of unconscious patients!_

_**Takeshi - no you wont** _

_Because I will kill you if you do ;)_

_**Kyouko - Bring it!** _

_I’m ready to die! Creep! Pervert!_

_**Takeshi - A/S/L** _

Kyouko is tempted to chuck her phone at the wall.

“Giving your brother hell, are you?” Tsuna’s dad chuckles.

“Everyone is so awful today,” she whines, slamming her phone down on the table as a less destructive gesture of violence.

“Oh, is that Kyouko-chan?” Nana comes in with a serving of tea for three. “Sorry, Tsu-kun isn’t here, and Hayato-kun’s escaped to his room.”

“I think I intimidate him!” Tsuna’s dad laughs. Kyouko eyes him speculatively. He _does_ intimidate him, because he was purposefully pressuring him somehow.

“Oh, it’s just because you hired him,” Nana dismisses, “really, dear, he’s been so excited to tutor Tsu-kun, and you pop out of nowhere?”

Kyouko checks her phone. No text from Ryouhei.

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Anyone say anything about magic yet_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_Magic?_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_K. Onii-san will talk to you then. Kill him if he resists_

Oh, Kyouko _will_.

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_WTF_

Hana sends her a photo of…Gokudera stalking the street outside her window. Wow, that was fast. How does he know where she lives?

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_WHY DOES HE KNOW WHERE I LIVE?_

“Busy social life?” Tsuna’s dad prompts.

“Sorry, since I wasn’t on the trip, everyone’s got stories. And Hana wants to know Gokudera’s number, since he doesn’t own a cell phone.”

“Oh, I’ll go tell him,” Nana says, sitting up.

… _Whoopsie!_

“So, Kyouko-chan,” Tsuna’s dad leans in. “What’s Tsuna like?”

Kyouko blinks innocently at him. “Tsuna is a really nice guy! And a hard worker! He doesn’t have a lot of confidence in himself, but he’s very diligent. He wants to go to college even though he hates school.”

“I’ve heard a lot about the Disciplinary Committee. What’s Hibari like?”

“He’s a jerk,” Kyouko says automatically, half because she’s unwilling to lie in front of someone who can detect it, and half because it’s true. “He doesn’t spend a lot of time with the Committee, though. Tsuna mostly works with Kusakabe-senpai, who’s a suuuuper nice guy, and Kusakabe-senpai is training me right now!”

“Oh, is he?” Tsuna’s dad is now interested in Kusakabe. That…should…be fine. Kusakabe is a good person. It’s fine. “So, you’re a teenager in the springtime of your youth, right? Any boys caught your eye?”

“Hm?” Kyouko asks with forced confusion. Definitely presents as a lie. Aauggh.

“You interested in romance?” Tsuna’s dad clarifies.

“No!” Kyouko says cheerfully. “Hana’s reeaally interested in boys, though.”

“Who’s she interested in?”

“Big mature guys. Usually older. She used to like Mochida-senpai, I think, but not anymore, and she’s mentioned that her hobbyist friend has a crush on someone. I think she’s excited about it because she doesn’t have any luck dating right now and she wants to live vicariously through him!” Kyouko doesn’t think she got that from mind-reading. Hana is just really predictable.

Tsuna’s dad is suitably bored by this gossip talk. He wanted to know if Tsuna was involved with anyone, and is disappointed that teenagers have lives, apparently. “Irie?”

“Dunno! I’ll have to meet with him some other time.” She needs to get his number somehow. Anyway. Time to get out of this pickle! “Uhm, you’re Tsuna’s dad, right?”

“Yep! I’m his old pops,” he guffaws fakely, “you see the resemblance?”

“Nope! Tsuna looks exactly like his mom!” Kyouko politely folds her hands on the table and smiles wide. “In fact, if it weren’t for Mama-san, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that you were his dad at all! I’ve been over to his house plenty, but I’ve never seen _you_ before. Tsuna said you don’t really come home at all. How long will you be here, by the way?”

Tsuna’s dad does not flinch. Neither does Kyouko. They stare each other down, both with an implicit threat in their eyes.

Kyouko’s phone buzzes.

Nana comes back down.

“E…Er…”

Kyouko whips her head around, smile still fixed. “Yes?”

“Hayato-kun…doesn’t seem to be in his room…?”

“Oh no!” Kyouko pops up. “I ought to go see Hana, then. Thanks for having me!”

“You don’t want to stay for tea…?”

“No! I want to hunt for Gokudera-kun afterwords. I’ve been meaning to yell at him for a few things.” She glances down at Tsuna’s dad, who is, of all things, _amused_. What! Does that mean he is aware that he is a bad father for leaving his family alone! Jerk! Rude! Evil!

“It’s been nice having you,” Tsuna’s dad says with a nod.

“Very nice,” Kyouko says frostily, then, to Nana, “see you later, Mama-san, I’ll drop by again when Tsuna gets back!”

She slips on her shoes and dashes out the door before they can stop her, and she flips her phone back open.

_**Takeshi - (no subject)** _

_Wakk_

_**Takeshi - (no subject)** _

_Wake_

_**Takeshi - (no subject)** _

_I will type slow_

_**Takeshi - (no subject)** _

_:(_

Oh, he’s gotten his phone back.

_**Kyouko - hi takeshi-kun!** _

_Take pic of bad doctor!_

She’s almost reached Hana’s house when she finally gets a reply.

_**Takeshi - cant** _

_Camera. Hard? Face  
aaaaa_

Kyouko stops walking and frowns at her phone.

_**Kyouko - ?** _

_Takeshi-kun are u ok??_

_**Takeshi - (no subject)** _

_Brain :(_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_You’re having trouble thinking?_

_**Takeshi - (no subject)** _

_Ya_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_Ok. You rest a little and don’t let bad doctor touch your phone!_

_**Takeshi - (no subject)** _

_K_

Kyouko stops in front of Hana’s house. Gokudera is still on the street, screaming up at Hana, who is hanging out of her bedroom window.

With a deep breath, she marches up to meet him.

  


* * *

 

 

“ _Gokudera-kun,”_ Kyouko shouts, “you have a lot of explaining to do!”

Hana holds her tongue, if only because Kyouko getting mad at people is objectively funny. Hana is mad enough at Gokudera that even Kyouko smacking him is comedy material.

“I’m not explaining shit,” Gokudera snaps at her, “and if you’ll _excuse_ me, I’m trying to establish _connections_.”

“Really? Because it looks to me like you’re yelling at Hana for no reason!” Kyouko folds her arms and glares.

“I can do both,” Gokudera retorts. “What’s _your_ problem?”

“You left Takeshi-kun alone with a criminal doctor, who is a pervert, and he is violating Takeshi-kun’s privacy!” Kyouko shouts. “And I’m going to kill him!”

“You know he’s a hitman, right?” Gokudera asks blandly.

Kyouko gasps dramatically.

“Gokudera, c’mon, leave her alone,” Hana sighs.

“I’m not leaving either of you alone until I have a phone tree in these hands! I got Tsuna’s dad riding up my ass, I lost the Boss, and now I gotta deal with _this_ shit?”

“Where’s he lost?” Kyouko asks, looking between them. “He’s with Hibari-senpai, isn’t he?”

“What? Since when?” Gokudera balks.

“Since…he called me…saying so…?”

“Did he have a dog?” Hayato asks urgently.

“Yes, he used it to calm Hibari-senpai down, but Hibari-senpai was rampaging at the time, so he might take a while to get back.” Kyouko visibly remembers she’s supposed to be angry, and she fixes Gokudera with a glare. “Why doesn’t Tsuna’s mafia dad know he’s with Hibari-senpai, by the way? He knew Tsuna was on the trip and there was a problem there!”

“Because you’re the only one he told, and god knows where those two ran off to?”

“He’s not answering his texts,” Hana interjects.

“He’s probably busy. Hibari-senpai would get mad if he was distracted. Anyway! Gokudera-kun! A _hitman!_ ”

“A specialist!” Gokudera folds his arms defensively. “Yamamoto was _dying,_ and there aren’t any doctors who could have treated him in time! I did what I had to!”

“Why was he dying?” Kyouko demands, starting to get shrill.

“Because I-” Gokudera chokes on his words and looks away.

Man. No one came out of that situation without blaming themselves a little, apparently.

“Because we were attacked,” Hana drawls from the window. Kyouko looks up at her, startled. “We were attacked and Takeshi-kun got hit with some sorta superdrug. I left our room before he got really sick. Gokudera’s right. He wouldn’t have had a choice.”

He was bleeding from every orifice,” Gokudera adds haltingly.

“What? Oh, _ew,_ dude, gross!”

Kyouko looks between them, and finally relaxes. “Well…Well he’s awake now.”

Gokudera jerks. “Really? He’s okay?”

“Yeah, we’ve been texting. He’s a little, uhm…” She looks at her phone.

“Shamal said he’d have Aphasia, maybe for a few days. He’ll struggle with language,” Gokudera says eagerly.

“Shamal,” Kyouko mutters under her breath, and starts rapidly tapping at her phone.

“Hey, what are you doing!”

“Texting Shamal.”

“Well…Don’t!”

“It’s none of your business who I text, Mr. Knows A Hitman Doctor,” Kyouko retorts.

Gokudera lets out a frustrated scream and throws his head up to look at Hana. “Look! We’re all worried about our friends! Go find Miki, and get the address of those two irrelevant jack-offs from your freaky batshit teacher, and that’s it! I’m with that! I just need a phone tree!”

“Get a cell, freak!” Hana shouts, though with less venom.

“Hana, you should take Kusakabe-senpai’s number,” Kyouko says. “And we’re having a _meeting_ , where we clear _all_ this up.”

“Fine,” Gokudera retorts. Then, to Hana, “do you at least have a spare?”

“Cheap-ass!” Hana bounces back into her room and sifts through her drawers until she finds her hideous old brick phone. She runs back to the window and chucks it at Gokudera. If it breaks, it breaks!

It doesn’t break it. He catches it with a fumble and flips her off.

“I’m canceling the plan on that thing tomorrow!”

“As if I couldn’t pay for my own phone plan, you cow!” Gokudera snarls back. He looks at the phone, and then back up at her. “…Thank you.”

“My numbers are the only ones in there, the only reason it’s still hooked up is so I can call my phone if I lose it,” Hana explains. “I’ll call if you lose that one too.”

“Fuck off.” Gokudera still presses buttons to check.

Kyouko is coming up through her house, based on the sound of Hana’s parents showering her with warm welcomes. Hana sighs and bounces back to tie a sweater around her waist. Honestly. How does Tsuna even deal with him?

Kyouko comes in, looking flustered and irritable. Hana gives her an understanding smile. Kyouko gives her Kusakabe’s number, and Hana gives her Shouichi’s.

They go downstairs together. “Gotta meet up with some people!” Hana calls.

“Meet up? But you just got here!”

“I forgot to get everyone’s numbers. Gokudera’s super pissed about it, you can hear him screaming outside.”

Her dad looks bemused, and her mother exasperated.

“And we have to catch up!” Kyouko adds.

“…Don’t be out late,” Hana’s mother finally allows. “ _We_ want to catch up.”

“Will do!” Hana beams, and they’re out the door.

Gokudera has already ditched, the bastard. Hana texts him. Her shitty brick cell can’t send or receive images, so if he thinks he can guide her based on images alone, she’ll kick his ass.

“Can I have Gokudera-kun’s number too?” Kyouko asks.

“Yeah, hold on.” She shares it. Gokudera sends a text.

_**Mobile Garbage - (no subject)** _

_1288888888sendingdirectio0 fucking_

Hana snorts.

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_u never text before? lol!_

_**Mobile Garbage - (no subject)** _

_Fuck u_

Gokudera calls instead.

The two girls split up, and Gokudera walks Hana through surprisingly accurate directions until she reaches Oogawa’s house. She pockets her phone and knocks on the door.

An older man wearing glasses appears. Hana waves at him. “Hey! I wanted to know if Oogawa-kun got home safe?”

He did, because Hana can see him sitting at the table just behind the guy at the door. His eyes are bandaged for what Hana can only assume is no reason whatsoever. He’s sitting next to an extremely sexy Italian man. Must be the guy who shot that one dude in the head. It’s good to know he’s still around, protecting Oogawa, and being sexy. Wearing a really stupid-looking T-shirt, though.

“He’s fine,” the man at the door says. He still turns around. “Miki, do you want to talk to your friend?”

“We’re not friends,” Oogawa says.

“Gokudera wants your number. He’s yelling at me about phone trees. You have a spare piece of paper or…?”

The guy at the door (Oogawa’s dad?) gets her some paper.

“Miki doesn’t have a cell phone,” the man says.

“Can’t all be perfect,” Hana replies cheerfully. She records Oogawa’s home phone number, and leaves hers and Gokudera’s.

She leaves Oogawa in peace, though laments the loss of the eye candy. She wishes there were some way to inconspicuously take a picture. Man, those _arms_.

Then she’s off all the way across town to get addresses from Miura-san. _So_ tedious. _And_ she has to tell her that she didn’t get to test the gun, and may in fact be permanently traumatized by the gun! _Hell_. Since Tsuna hasn’t texted back, Hana sends him an update, mostly to harass him.

Hana doesn’t even have to to press the button before Miura-san picks up. “Hana-chan!”

“Hi, I—”

“Come up, come up!”

Hana lets out a put-upon sigh, but allows herself to be buzzed in.

Miura-san is waiting expectantly for her in the apartment. “Hana-chan! Excellent! I heard you were in mortal peril?”

“Yeah. Some people died.”

“How many people, would you say?”

“Uh…” She counts on her fingers. Miura-san’s smile droops. “Yakuza, some dude I don’t care about, and the guy Tsuna super-murdered. Haru-chan was telling you about that one.”

“Yes. She was.” Miura-san looks off into space gravely, then bounces back into place. “So, did you need anything?”

“I want to know where Haru and Shouichi live, please?” Hana tries.

“Don’t you have his number yet?”

“I’m afraid he won’t tell me.”

“Hmmmm.” Miura-san flies off to go get something. Hana wanders in, not bothering to take her shoes off. It’s all hardwood, and it’s filthy. She could get splinters. There’s like five piles of sawdust by the door alone.

Miura-san is writing what must be their addresses on a piece of paper when Hana follows her in. Hana lets out a relieved sigh, thankful she won’t have to deal with her teacher beating around the bush.

“About the gun,” Hana starts.

“I doubt you would have many opportunities to use it, between the yakuza, mafia, and CEDEF,” Miura-san says.

“Right,” says Hana, then, “what’s the CEDEF?”

“None of your business. Here you go!” Miura-san slides the paper into Hana’s hands, wheels her around, and carts her out the door, slamming it behind her.

Huh. That was odd.

Well, whatever, she wants this done by sundown.

Haru’s street is… _right on Tsuna’s street ugghhh!_ Why does she have to go over there! The impending threat of his freaky mafia dad creeps her the hell out! Can’t she just give these to Gokudera?

No, because Gokudera would whine at her. Because he’s an asshole. Blagh.

Tsuna’s neighbourhood is a good ways away from Miura-san’s apartment, but still within casual strolling distance. She could probably get there in like half an hour, if she picks up the pace.

She gets to Haru’s house quickly enough. It’s a nice place, about the same size as the Sawada’s, and thus a little bigger than Hana’s house. Hana hops up to the door and manages to knock with confidence, _for once_.

Haru answers! Hooray!

“Hahi! Hana-chan!” She practically shouts. “I wasn’t expecting you!”

“Phone tree!” Hana says, wagging her own phone.

“My phone’s upstairs! Come in if you want, I don’t usually have friends over!” Haru bounces backwards. “Moooom, my friend is over!”

“I have to go bug Shouichi after this, though,” Hana adds sheepishly.

“That’s okay! We can hang out tomorrow, right?”

“I’m pretty sure if we don’t, Gokudera will break your door down and scream at you until you do!”

Haru gives her a nervous look, like she’s not sure if Hana is joking or not. _Hana_ isn’t sure if she’s joking or not. Under enough stress, Gokudera could do anything. She still hasn’t forgotten the time he nearly flung himself into traffic.

“A friend?” Haru’s mom asks, looking delighted in one of the archways.

“Hi!” Hana squeaks nervously. God, she’s never been to anyone’s house besides Kyouko’s. She’d never willingly enter Tsuna’s house, because that would make them officially friends.

“This is Hana-chan, she’s being taught by nee-chan!” Haru introduces.

“Oh, you’re…Fuyumi’s student.” The mood drops several levels.

“She teaches me how to shoot guns,” Hana explains, “I try to avoid being in her apartment for too long. It gets weirder every time I go in there.”

The mood goes back to normal. “Yes, doesn’t it? I’d call her a hoarder, but the contents are always changing. Such a strange young woman, but I can’t say that behaviour came out of nowhere. She’s always been on the wilder side of creative. Do you want snacks?”

“Oh, uhm, no, I’m not staying long.” Hana toes off her shoes and follows Haru’s bounding steps.

The halls in Haru’s house are cramped and thickly carpeted. Hana enjoys the plush feeling under her toes as she lets herself be led into Haru’s bedroom, which is…

“Oh my gooooood!” Hana squeals, pouncing on the gowns on display on top of Haru’s dresser. “What _are_ these? Are these handmade?”

“Ah! They’re not done!” Haru throws herself in front of them. “I haven’t mastered sewing yet, give those a little time! Uhhmm, why don’t you look at my props?”

She gestures to the far wall. The floor around it is covered in tarp, and it’s home to a crapton of painted cardboard.

“Woah.”

“It’s supposed to be, uhm, a yakata-bune! It’s a model for the proper wood version I’m making! The theatre club said I’m a big help to their club, you see, so they said I can be in their play! It’s a musical!”

“Heehhh. You and your sister are really alike.”

Haru lights up. “Oh! You think so?”

“Enthusiasm to skill, I’d say. I wish she’d be more like you, to be honest,” Hana sighs.

“Ah, ahaha…” Haru rubs the back of her head sheepishly. “…R-Right, you wanted my number?”

“Yeah. I didn’t take it when you showed up, sorry.”

Haru snatches up her cellphone, and she exchanges numbers for her in flustered silence.

“This second number is Gokudera-kun?”

“Yeah. Don’t mind it if he screams at you, that’s just how he talks.”

Haru doesn’t look happy about this, but there’s not a lot about Gokudera to be happy about, honestly.

“I’ll go bother Shouichi. Keep an ear out, Haru-chaaaan!” Hana waves.

“Oh! Right! Okay! Thanks, Hana-chan! See you!” Haru waves.

Shouichi lives a little closer. Hana sends out yet another text update to Tsuna, simply for the sake of it, and sends much of the same to Kyouko.

Shouichi lives in an apartment complex, though it’s a lot fancier than Miura-san’s. It’s got six storeys, but according to the address, Shouichi’s apartment is on the fourth floor.

Hana has his number already, so she just chucks a rock at his window and texts him the numbers he needs.

_**Shouichi - (no subject)** _

_What is wrong with u???_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Tired!!!_

Shouichi call her. She picks up.

“ _Go home!”_

Shouichi hangs up.

A job well done!

Now everyone’s available for Kyouko’s meeting and they all have the means to meet up again, though Hana doubts most of them will want to. Still no answer from Tsuna, though. Hm. It’s like, after five, now. What’s he even up to? It can’t be _that_ important.

Halfway back to Kyouko’s, she gets another text.

_**Kyouko - Takeshi-kun is back!** _

_He has all of your things! Someone is driving him back. Not the doctor. He’s mute now!_

What, like, permanently?

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_How mute_

_**Kyouko - (no subject)** _

_It’s from his sickness. Gokudera said he might have Aphasia for a little while, right?_

_**Hana - (no subject)** _

_Ah_

Hana frowns at her phone.

_**Hana - wait** _

_Gimme his deets!_

Kyouko sends Hana his deets, and Hana sends these to Gokudera. Then she texts Takeshi.

_**Hana - wb!** _

_How are u?_

_**Takeshi - ty** _

_Tired lol_

Well, Kyouko has his number, but it’s probably not fair to demand anything of him. She sends a message back.

_**Hana - Meeting** _

_Be up tomorrow morning! We’ll come to yours to have a meeting!_

 

* * *

 

Takeshi stares at his phone for a very long time before he realizes. Stopped.

He presses his weight against the door until it finally falls open, and hoists his big, big bag out after him. He nods at the driver and goes home.

His dad opens the door. Takeshi knows dad. Hug.

“Hey, son. How was your trip?”

Takeshi takes out the bag and the sword. He shows the sword.

“Oh. Wow. Where did you…?”

Takeshi stares.

“Are you alright?”

Takeshi opens his mouth. Where.

Ah.

He takes out the book. Book.

“Takeshi?”

Takeshi hands over the book.

“What’s that on your head?”

Takeshi mimes opening the book.

“Can you not talk?”

Oh. Mm.

Takeshi takes out his phone and types. Takes forever. Buttons are hard.

_Bad time thinking._   
_Got hurt._   
_Won’t talk for a while._   
_Will get better._

That took too long. His dad is already staring at the book Takeshi gave him.

Takeshi shows him the message on the phone.

“Takeshi, where did you get this?”

Ahh. Took so long to type that already. The phone slips from his hand a little. He only has one arm to type with. Hard.

His dad looks at the phone, then at him. Takeshi’s face twitches a little. He’ll go lie down now. He takes the book and puts it back in his bag. Rest time.

His dad doesn’t stop him. Takeshi goes up to his room. He drops his bag and lies onto his bed.

He doesn’t sleep.

He doesn’t sleep for a long, long time.

Then Gokudera is inside his window.

“You call _this_ recovered? Get up, I’m living here until I’m sure you won’t choke on your own vomit.”

 


	34. A Point Of View - The Record Of Sawada Tsunayoshi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last…chapter…..15,000 WORDS….
> 
> Like Yamazaki's, this POV is less about the character himself and more about the story's lore and context for the situation they're in. There's approximately 3 billion pieces of foreshadowing in this.
> 
> It's important to note that Tsuna was being sexually abused for three years, and the most important part is how he feels about that, so I isolated the symptom buildup. If you're uncomfortable with explicit mentions of Tsuna's abuse, it's mentioned outright in "E" and the first instance of "Sawada Tsunayoshi", so skip those if you need to. If you don't want to see a child being groomed at all, stop reading at "Jasmine" and skip to "Dead-Eyed Tsuna".
> 
> Despite those more direct allusions, there are no rape scenes or horror porn moments in this chapter.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Needles, alcohol abuse, human experimentation, child grooming, a pre-pubescent child coping with being sexually abused over the span of 3 years

**\- Small -**

* * *

 

Sawada Tsunayoshi is a small boy.

He was born prematurely and never grew out of it. Everything about him is shrunken and breakable. A lot of people think he’s only three. Papa will plant big kisses on his forehead and call him his ‘little man’. When he sees people get married he assumes he’ll have to wait to be even older than most people because he’s so tiny, because he’s five and doesn’t know how growing up works yet.

Married people are a man and a woman, but he’s five and his understanding of women he likes begins and ends with his mother.

“When I grow up, can I marry mama?” He asks one day.

She laughs and says no but she’s very flattered.

Tsuna goes back to his crayons and figures he just doesn’t get it.

* * *

  **\- Grandpa -**

* * *

 

When Tsuna’s dad comes back, it’s with an old man. He says to call him grandpa.

The four of them do a lot of family stuff, like dinner and party games. Grandpa is on vacation and he likes exploring the town. Tsuna is supposed to walk with Papa but he runs ahead and eagerly points out random places he likes, and drags him into the cake shop so he can give reviews on all the cakes.

“Hey, Tsunayoshi, how about we go to that amusement park together later?”

Tsuna hollers and bounces off the walls until Papa has to restrain him. Grandpa laughs.

“Full of energy, isn’t he?”

“Unfortunately,” Papa grunts.

When they get home, Papa and Grandpa start talking about adult stuff like family troubles or something. Tsuna is bored in minutes, so he wriggles out of his father’s arms and wanders into the kitchen, where Mama is cooking dinner.

“Mama, I’m bored!”

“I’m sorry, Tsu-kun, I’m a little busy—”

“…’Kay.” Tsuna huffs and wanders back down the hall, planning on going to play in the backyard, but when he glances towards the front, he sees Grandpa’s coat.

Tsuna is six, and doesn’t have strong enough morals to understand the complexity of _‘stealing is bad’._

He grabs grandpa’s wallet and takes it to the backyard so he can look at it without getting caught. He recognizes wallets; it’s where you keep important stuff, like photos. He figures he’ll understand what Grandpa and Papa are talking about if he sees the photos.

At first, all he sees is a card with Grandpa’s picture on it and foreign writing, and then more cards like credit cards. He fiddles with it until he finds a flap held with a button, and he pries it open to see photos.

There’s a picture of Grandpa and a woman, and there’s a reaaally old-looking black-and-white photo of another, younger woman with a tattoo on her face, and then there’s a picture of four grown-ups that must be Grandpa’s kids because thats how grandpas work Tsuna is pretty sure.

They all have black hair. The tallest is skinny and has a big nose and big cheekbones, and then the second tallest has hair parted in the middle with a smaller kinda-hooked nose who smiles really nice at Tsuna and it makes him feel nice. The other two are short; one is fat and has messy hair and he’s the only one not in a suit, and the other is just young. He’s got cool-looking eyebrows and he’s not wearing a tie and his skin’s a little darker and his nose is really straight and thin instead of hooked. He’s the coolest one, so Tsuna decides that one is his favourite.

There’s other pictures, but of boring stuff like flowers and graduation pictures of the older men, so Tsuna buttons the wallet back up again and takes it back to the coat, then tries listening in again now that he knows who Grandpa is talking about.

“I’m afraid I’ve never been involved with raising my children…not as much as I should. With Xanxus…”

Darn it. He doesn’t know their names. This conversation is still confusing and boring. Tsuna sighs dramatically and stamps back to the yard to go occupy himself.

There’s not really much to do. They tried tying a rope to the tree, once, but after a few attempts he and Mama gave up. He should ask Papa to do it! That would be fun.

Tsuna decides on playing with his ball. You can do a lot of things with a ball, like throw it, or lay on it, or kick it, or bounce it. He starts by laying on it and trying to roll around the yard, but the ball just rolls out from underneath him and leaves him facedown in the grass. That didn’t work.

He grabs it with his feet and tosses it back to his front. He should play catch instead! Tsuna gets up and starts bouncing the ball against the side of the house. The window to the kitchen is open, so he bounces it above and catches it where Mama can see him.

She doesn’t. Tsuna clutches the ball and runs up to the window. He’s not tall enough, so he sets it down against the wall and stands on it so he can peek inside. Oh, Mama is at the counter instead of the sink.

“Mamaaaaaa!” Tsuna shouts.

She glances up and laughs into the back of her hand. “Tsu-kun!”

“Mama watch this!” Tsuna hops down and grabs the ball and runs back to where he was and bounces the ball above the window again and catches it perfectly.

“My, Tsu-kun, you’re so talented!”

Tsuna beams.

He tries throwing it into the air and catching it next, which is harder because it’s harder to see where it is and when he has to catch it. When he bounces it against things it goes back the same way he threw it, most of the time, but when he throws it in the air he never knows where his hands have to be to grab it again. He feels awesome when he manages to catch it.

Feeling brave, he chucks it reaaaally high in the air.

It hits the fence, knocking it open, and bounces wildly off course.

“Ah! Aahhhh!” Tsuna wails. He takes off after it…and then stops.

There is a…dog.

Tsuna blinks at it. He’s not usually around animals without Mama. Warily, he takes a step back. He’s never pet a dog without his mom carrying him before. It’s smaller than most dogs, too. He’s never even _seen_ a him-sized dog. It’s panting at him with its tongue sticking out. Is it hungry?

The dog charges.

Tsuna screams.

He falls down and jolts his elbows and starts crying. The dog paws at his legs and Tsuna screams even louder.

Grandpa and Papa come out of the house and look at him. Tsuna cries louder because he’s too scared to talk.

Grandpa chuckles and picks Tsuna up. “Did the dog that dog scare you?”

Tsuna mops his cheeks, assured that he’s safe now, and stares at the dog still panting at him. “It’s hungry!”

Grandpa laughs again. “No it’s not. Panting is how dogs say they’re happy. He wants to play with you!”

Tsuna squints suspiciously at Grandpa.

“Here, I’ll show you.” He places Tsuna down. Tsuna flinches, but relaxes when Grandpa doesn’t stand again. “Okay, call him.”

Tsuna freezes. The dog is standing there, panting at him. Slowly, he pats his lap and calls him like he’d call for a cat.

The dog trots over and sniffles him loudly. Tsuna leans all the way backward into Grandpa’s chest.

“Go on, try petting it.”

Tsuna slowly reaches out and leaves his hand in the air. The dog sniffs that too, and then licks it. Tsuna giggles. Feeling way better, he leans forward and pets the dog’s back roughly. The dog wiggles its bottom until it falls to the ground and flips onto its back and exposes its belly. Tsuna rubs that too.

“See? Not so scary now, is it?”

“No,” Tsuna says.

“A dog is only bad if it’s growling at you. But sometimes, a dog might look at you from the corner of its eye, and that means they’re very scared, and might bite you to make you go away,” Grandpa recites.

“Ooohhhhh,” Tsuna says, “I didn’t know that.”

“I used to keep dogs. I’m an expert,” Grandpa smiles.

“Wow. Papa!” Tsuna looks at Papa, who is leaning against the house with his arms folded, grinning at him. “Papa he’s a dog expert!”

“Grandpa’s got a lot of skills, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah he’s an expert!” Tsuna goes back to rubbing the dog’s belly really hard. He leans forward, but Grandpa pulls back.

“You can’t hug dogs either. They’ll think you’re trapping them or play-fighting and might hurt you on accident.”

“Oops.” Tsuna leans as far away as he can while still being able to pet the dog. Grandpa and Papa laugh at him. He can hear Mama from the window too.

Grandpa places a hand on Tsuna’s back and scratches his neck a little like how you’d scratch a dog. Tsuna squeals and hunches his shoulders.

“…You’ve got a unique heart, Tsunayoshi.”

Tsuna swivels around to look at him. “Huh?”

He grins. “…It’s nothing. But I’m glad you weren’t burning too bright. Sometimes, people are so brave and strong they _explode_.”

Tsuna gapes, horrified.

“You’re alright,” Grandpa says.

“IS PAPA GONNA EXPLODE,” Tsuna shrieks.

Grandpa breaks down into silent laughter. His Papa isn’t nearly as quiet.

“ _PAPA ARE YOU GOING TO EXPLODE,”_ he screams.

Papa can’t hold himself up and wheezes on the ground, cackling.

* * *

  **-x-**

* * *

 

After dinner, Grandpa and Papa stay up to drink, and Tsuna and Mama go to bed. Tsuna sleeps in his own room like a big kid, but mostly because Mama says he has to while Papa’s home. He’s tired enough to not care too much, even though he has to hug a stuffie to feel comfortable.

He wakes up while the moon is still pouring through his window desperately needing to pee. He quietly slips out of bed and goes out on his tip-toes. There’s an orange glow coming from the bottom of the stairs, and he can hear quiet voices, which means Grandpa and Papa are still up.

When he finishes he tip-toes to the stairs, and then down them, when he can’t quite hear what they’re saying. He has to get to the very bottom before he can make them out.

“I’m still grateful,” says Papa, “sorry to trouble you, though.”

“It’s fine. Haloed Skys are a problem, whether it’s a Famiglia matter or not.”

“Eugh. I remember what it was like before I got the hang of it. Itchy.”

“ _Itchy,”_ Grandpa laughs.

“Feels better now that I know what I’m doing, I mean, but it wasn’t pleasant. I’m glad Tsuna doesn’t have to deal with that.”

“He’s a good boy. Your wife raised him well.”

“I know. He’s going to be strong,” his Papa says.

Tsuna blinks at his drowsiness and heads back up the stairs. He sleeps fine after that.

* * *

  **\- Healthy -**

* * *

 

When the greeter at Kokuyou Healthy Land says there’s a hospital, Tsuna demands that his Papa goes to get a checkup.

“Tsuna, I don’t need a checkup,” Papa laughs.

“But what if you _explode,_ ” Tsuna insists.

“Grandpa Timoteo made it so I’ll never explode, I promise.”

“Uggghhh,” Tsuna moans. “Mama tell him to go to the doctor!”

“Oh, there’s attractions over there, indulge him,” she beams.

His Papa throws his hands up and goes to the hospital. Tsuna nods sagely. Grandpa gives him a wry look.

“Now I’m going to show you all of the attractions,” Tsuna announces.

“Oh? Have you been here before?”

“Uh-uh, but I have a _pamphlet_.” Tsuna shows the glossy paper proudly.

He doesn’t do a good job; he is six, and this is all new to him. Most of the time he gets distracted, especially in the zoo. His Mama takes a bunch of pictures while they move, most of them of Tsuna. Tsuna eventually gets tired of sprinting everywhere, and Grandpa lets him ride on his shoulders.

The park is big and fun and even though Papa isn’t there, Tsuna beams at the people around him because he gets to be up really high and they don’t. But then Grandpa gets really tired too because even though he’s still really small, six-year-olds are kind of heavy.

They stop at a cafe for lunch. They’re going to go see Papa when they’re done eating. Mama picks something out to bring to him too so he won’t be hungry or anything. Tsuna gets to eat a sandwich and a donut and drink a tea-flavoured smoothie that is like normal tea, but not bitter and horrible.

Tsuna is a slow eater. Mama says she’ll go see what Papa is up to. She brings Papa’s food. Tsuna is alone with Grandpa.

“Do you have babies?” Tsuna asks.

“I’m sorry?”

“Babies. Like you’re their daddy.”

“Three sons,” he chuckles.

“I thought you had four.”

Grandpa pauses in the middle of reaching for a cinnamon roll. “I…I beg your pardon?”

“I thought you had four sons.”

Grandpa opens his mouth, closes it, and puts his hand on the pocket where Tsuna found the wallet. “…Ah. That would be my secret son.”

“Why you got a secret son?”

“He’s very loud. I don’t like pointing people his way. He’ll start fights.”

“I won’t fight him,” Tsuna assures Grandpa.

“I’m…” Grandpa holds a wrinkly hand to his mouth and his smile is really tight, like he’s forcing it into a thin little line. “…I’m sure you won’t, Tsuna.”

“Which one’s the secret one?” Tsuna points at the wallet.

“It’s a secret.”

“Oooohh.” That makes sense.

Then Grandpa makes a phone call and Tsuna is once again preoccupied with his sandwich. It’s really big. He hopes he has room for the donut.

Grandpa gets up and takes his phone call to a bench even though Tsuna doesn’t know what language he’s talking in, but that’s okay because Grandpa can see him and Tsuna isn’t moving anywhere so that means he’s _supervised_. Being supervised is really important, he’s told, because he has a ‘tendency to wander’, which is a fancy way of saying that when Tsuna sees something cool he can’t wait for adults to get with the program.

Speaking of which: something cool!

Tsuna sticks the donut in his mouth and goes over to Grandpa and points at the aquarium entrance. Grandpa looks at it and nods at him, but doesn’t move. Tsuna decides an adult knowing where you are is still technically being supervised so he goes in anyway.

The aquarium is very blue, and tall, but not a lot bigger than the aquarium in the really big pet store downtown. It’s just two walls. But the tanks are _really_ tall, and they’ve got _really_ big reefs instead of a bunch of little boxes. Tsuna stares at them all. One of them has a giant goldfish. Plenty of other kids are pressing their face up against the glass.

Tsuna runs outside and checks to make sure Grandpa is still supervising him. He stands there and waits for Grandpa to look at him. Then, adequately supervised, he goes back to exploring.

The third wall is actually another door, that leads to a green hallway full of bugs. It’s all fence stuff instead of glass. There’s a toooon of beetles everywhere, and a _giant centipede_. It is the coolest thing Tsuna has ever seen in his entire life. The fencing is too tiny to put his finger through, though, so he just keeps going.

The next room is like the bug room except with glass and a lot of sunroofs and butterflies _everywhere_. There’s a bunch of flowers and it’s like a garden. Tsuna thinks he should finish up quick so he can run back to the café and take Mama here.

Not as many people like the butterflies. There’s only one family here. The next room you can’t even get into because it’s got a rope across it and a sign that says ‘CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS’. Tsuna thinks he should probably go get Mama right now, or at least run back to Grandpa before his Supervised time runs out.

It’s then that Tsuna realizes that no one is looking at him.

And the sign above the door says ‘REPTILES’.

Tsuna doesn’t think. He just drops to his knees and crawls under the rope. He has to be really quick before someone comes in and sees him. The hallway curves, probably like a snake, and Tsuna gets up when he’s pretty sure he’s out of sight.

The Reptile Room doesn’t really start with reptiles. It starts with empty glass cages with nothing but branches in them. Then frogs, which Tsuna is absolutely certain are not reptiles. Reptiles have scales and frogs have _slime_.

Then a circular room, full of snakes and things.

There is a single dark-haired boy standing in the middle, with his back to Tsuna.

And there are about forty snakes in the circular room, all staring at him.

Tsuna feels like he’s looking at something really important and magical, like he doesn’t _know_ what, but animals don’t really care about people, generally, especially cats, but maybe not dogs. They don’t all look at one person at the same time. That’s a weirdo thing.

There’s an exit door too, but there’s a big scary man standing in front of it, watching the reptile boy. Tsuna backs away slowly, and gets back down on his hands and knees. Carefully, he scuffles backwards until he’s back to the rope, and he pulls himself up in the butterfly room again.

“Well aren’t you beautiful.”

Tsuna whirls around and nearly chokes on his donut. There’s a teen boy in a hoodie and what Tsuna thinks is the high school uniform underneath. The hoodie is up so Tsuna can barely see his apple-red hair.

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Haha, but I was!” He leans over the blocking rope like he’s trying to peer into the room without even going into the curving corridor.

“What things were you doing?”

“Nothing good! By which I mean spying. Where’s your mom, kiddo?”

“She’s giving Papa some food.” Tsuna pointedly takes a bite of his donut. “I’m being Supervised but I gotta go out and make sure Grandpa can keep doing that.”

He quirks his head and waits a beat too long to reply. “Oh boy, Supervision is important. But I can supervise you!”

Tsuna scrunches up his nose. “Really?”

The teen claps his hands together. “Sure thing! I haven’t seem you in a while, it’d be nice to hang out.”

“When was the last time you saw me?” Tsuna doesn’t recognize this guy at _all_.

“You were four. We only met once, so I’m not surprised it didn’t stick. I’m Kunihiro.” He pulls back the hoodie. His hair isn’t just apple red, it’s _bright_. It looks like it was coloured in with the same stuff they use to paint fire trucks. “Say, Tsuna, how ‘bout we be friends! If you’re my best friend I’ll show you all kinds of neat stuff!”

“Oh! Okay! I gotta tell Grandpa.” Tsuna turns to go, but Kunihiro snags him by the collar.

“C’mon, you don’t wanna hang out?”

Tsuna looks the teenager up and down. He’s not really old or anything, but he looks like he won’t listen to him when he wants to do something, which is…bad, maybe. It’d probably make Tsuna really mad, anyway, Tsuna hates bossy people who don’t listen.

“No. I gotta go be Supervised.” Pause. “By Grandpa.”

“Suit yourself. Say, you know Auntie Junko?”

Tsuna’s brow furrows. He shakes his head slowly.

“What about Mrs. Oogawa.”

“Oh, mom hangs out with her.”

“Theeeere you go. I’m her little bro. None of my siblings trust me alone with children either, so if you drop by and visit, we could talk while you’re being Supervised, so you can make extra sure I’m not bugging you!”

Tsuna decides to do the exact opposite of that.

“Okay. Bye.”

“It’s been nice seeing you again! Tell your mom I said hi.”

The stranger waves and stares weirdly. It takes Tsuna a few moments to realize he isn’t blinking.

Tsuna sprints full-speed through the bug hallway and doesn’t look back, and when he goes back outside, he has to blink at the sudden light. It takes him a while to see properly.

Grandpa is gone.

He pauses in the doorway. He can’t see Grandpa anywhere. Not down either side of the road, and he doesn’t look like he’s near the café. Tsuna slowly heads back to his drink and sandwich, and sits there and eats it by himself. He looks around for anyone else to be Supervising him. There isn’t any.

He finishes his sandwich and sits there and tries very hard not to cry.

“Look at you,” someone says, and this person is _definitely_ a stranger, because he’s foreign and everything. He’s standing by the door to the cafe. Looking at him. Not like Kunihiro looked at him, Kunihiro looked at him like Tsuna probably looked at Reptile Boy, except with less blinking. This man is looking at him like he has superman vision that can pick up on all the stains on his shirt.

Tsuna raises his hands over his shirt uncertainly.

“Weren’t you sitting with an older man? Was he your grandpa?”

Tsuna nods slowly. He looks around. “Where’d he go?”

“He had business. Do you need someone to watch you?”

Unlike Kunihiro, who was just kind of weird and bossy, Tsuna feels like _this_ is one of those Stranger Danger things. He takes his drink and immediately starts walking away.

“Where are you going? Don’t you want to find your grandpa? I can take you to him, if you don’t want to wait.”

“NO THANK YOU,” Tsuna yells.

A bunch of people look his way. Nobody else bothers him.

Tsuna goes back into the aquarium where Grandpa was Supervising him and sits in the corner where he can see everyone come in and out. He’d go outside to check if Mama is back yet but he doesn’t want to get snatched. This is just like when he gets lost in the grocery store. He’ll stand somewhere and Mama will move on and all he has to do is wait until she comes back to his side of the aisle again.

There’s a really loud crash.

Kunihiro comes sprinting into the aquarium.

He stops when he sees Tsuna. “Tsuna?”

He knows Tsuna’s name, which is a good sign, even if he’s really not interested in anything Tsuna has to say and looks like he spends a lot of time on The Street. “Grandpa’s not outside.”

“What?” He looks outside. “Where was he waiting?”

“By the bench. He was on the phone.”

“There’s someone waiting there already. Hold on.” He scoops Tsuna up and sprints out of the building like he’s running from something.

“What’s going on?”

“I, uh, may have over-extended myself. Look, there.” He gestures to a man Tsuna doesn’t recognize. He’s foreign too, but he doesn’t like the scary man who bugged him at the cafe.

“I don’t know him.”

The man is looking for something. When he sees the two of them, his expression clears. “Tsunayoshi-kun?”

“I don’t know you,” Tsuna pronounces loudly.

“You wouldn’t, I’m just here to watch over Timoteo-san — he just left, there’s been an…incident.” The man is tall and has a big-ish nose and dark hair and looks a bit handsome.

“Are you Grandpa’s baby?” Tsuna asks as Kunihiro gently puts him down.

“Wha— oh, no,” he laughs. “I’ve been told I look like Federico, though.”

“Dunno who that is.”

“That’s your grandpa’s kid which means he’s all caught up on why your grandpa had to go which means if it’s okay with you I gotta _OH SHIT—_ ” Kunihiro takes off in a full sprint, oozing a smokey feeling that tastes spicy. Only a second after, the man who was watching the Reptile Boy runs out and looks around. He locks eyes with Tsuna.

“Have you seen a boy in a hoodie?”

Tsuna points in the opposite direction Kunihiro went because Kunihiro knows Mama so Mama would probably be mad at him if he let him get caught.

“Little over-ambitious _fuck_ ,” he mutters. His eyes land on Grandpa’s watch-man, and Tsuna can tell he recognizes him even though his face doesn’t change. He doesn’t chase after Kunihiro, though, just nods and goes back into the aquarium.

“What was _that_ all about?” Grandpa’s watch-man asks.

Tsuna purses his lips. Spying is secret.

“Where’s your parents, Tsunayoshi-kun?”

“Healthy Land,” Tsuna says, pointing up the hill.

“That’s good. I work there part-time when your Grandpa isn’t around, I know all the places your parents can be.”

“’Kay. Thank you,” Tsuna says politely.

“My name’s Valentin.” He says it in an accent so unlike Japanese Tsuna can’t comprehend the sound of it. “Ba-re-n-ti-n,” he repeats in a Japanese accent.

“That’s a neat name. Why’s it sound weird?”

“I’m Russian.”

“Is it cold in Russia?”

“I lived down south, so not much colder than Yamagata.” His hand is calloused and when Tsuna runs his fingers over them, they’re covered in scars, like burns and little ridges. “Doctor’s marks,” he explains, “I play with chemicals too much for my own good.”

“You should be careful,” Tsuna says.

His eyes trace down to the sleeves, where Tsuna thinks a doctor would get stained a lot.

There’s a thin red spray across the edge that matches the line on his other sleeve.

Tsuna feels uneasy.

They enter the ground floor of the hospital, which is actually just a kind of clinic, according to the pamphlet, and Tsuna thinks they might call it a hospital because that sounds cooler. When he goes inside, he feels all tingly.

“It’s nice in here,” Tsuna says.

Valentin hums. He doesn’t look around, just strides down the hall.

“Where are we going?”

Valentin doesn’t answer.

They go into a little checkup room. Valentin looks through his drawers. “Give me a second, I wanted to get something for you…”

“Am I having a checkup?”

“No, I just— here we go. Tsunayoshi-kun, have you ever noticed anything strange coming off of people? Like they’re surrounded by a bubble that feels a certain way, or something wafting off of them…”

Tsuna shakes his head, but then stops. “…Uhmmm.”

“How about that tingly feeling when you walked in here.”

“Oh, yeah. Maybe.”

“Nice. Timoteo-san noticed you could do something like that.” He takes out a needle. “How are you with these?”

“Uhmmm…” Tsuna frowns.

“Certain needles hurt more than others. This won’t be much worse than a flu shot.” He taps it a few times. “Are you afraid of the pain or the needle going in?”

“The…The…It hurting.”

“If you’re afraid of the pain, watching it go in helps.” He ties a band around Tsuna’s arm.

“Why am I getting a shot?”

“That’s a secret. You can probably ask your father what a VD injection is. Hand up, keep still.”

It takes hardly a second, and watching the needle makes him queasy, but he doesn’t flinch. Tsuna blinks rapidly. The lighting feels really yellow. He’s not sure why he didn’t notice.

“Sorry to keep you. Let’s find your Mama.” He takes Tsuna by the hand and leads him back out to the main room. They look around together. The upper floor is full of waiting rooms that have movie screens so you have something to do while you’re bored of all the waiting. Then they go all the way to the top floor to a closed-down stage theatre.

Valentin hums in an unhappy way. Tsuna blinks at the dust motes in the windows. They look like they’re glittering.

They head back downstairs and go over to the receptionist. Valentin gives her a worried smile. “Have you seen the Sawadas?”

“Iemitsu’s in a meeting with Doctor Ishigaki.” She gestures to another hallway. Valentin takes Tsuna down to an office. He knocks on the door, but doesn’t wait with Tsuna. He’s heading further in, down a hallway that must have really filthy light covers because it’s _really_ yellow.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to take care of something. Remember, tell your Papa you got a _VD injection_ , and Timoteo is headed back home.”

“What’s a VD injection, though? What happened to Grandpa?”

Valentin doesn’t answer. He leaves through a pair of double doors.

The door to the office opens to Papa. He’s frowning.

“Tsuna, what happened?”

“Grandpa had to go home. His watch-man gave me a…a Bii-Dii, uhm, needle,” Tsuna struggles to say.

“A VD injection?” Papa takes him by the arm and looks at the band-aid Valentin put on his arm. “Grandpa wanted you to have this?”

“I think so.”

“Ugh. This trip was a mistake.” Papa sighs and scoops him up in his arms, by his legs, just like how Kunihiro did it. “Your Mama went back to go find you, you should have stayed put.”

“Oh. Sorry. Grandpa was Supervising but then he was gone and people were bugging me.”

“ _Oh._ ” Papa clenches his teeth, and when he smiles, it’s a worried kind of smile. “Explains the caution. Why don’t we go see Mama, and we can all go somewhere nice where no one can bug you.”

“Kay.” Tsuna wraps his arms around his Papa’s neck. It’s hard and solid and warm against Tsuna’s cheek. Tsuna sees yellow until they’re finally away from the super-tinted lights and back into the sunlight.

Nothing _looks_ stained, though.

 

* * *

**\- Mafia -**

* * *

 

Sawada Tsunayoshi learns about the mafia when he is six, and he doesn't think much of it.

His Papa was upset all day, and when he got home he took the phone to the back deck and got _super_ mad. Tsuna had to sprint all the way up to his bedroom to catch the conversation through the window because he was worried the call was about how mad Papa was at Tsuna for wandering.

It isn’t, which makes the actual contents only interesting by nature of how upset Papa sounds.

“The _fuck_ are they doing, letting _mafia_ in? God no…I actually _asked for permission_ to be here, and I was _born_ in Namimori, this is ludicrous…Well then what the fuck is _Misosazai_ doing letting mafia in?” He’s talking fast and furious and Tsuna has never heard him like this before. Even though the anger isn’t aimed at him, Tsuna feels scared enough to slide down the wall and curl up into a ball.

“Fucking _Xanxus,_ this is _not_ the time! I was supposed to be here for a month, do you think I can handle this level of—” He sounds like he’s choking on air. “Assassinations…? No, I mean…No, it’s fine. It’s nice that this is tempered by actual _work_ for me to do. How long do you think the case will take?”

Tsuna lowers his head until he face is buried in his knees. He sort of understands what kind of conversation it is.

“God…yeah, just, he’s going to do something, and he’s going to do it while we’re busy with the investigation, so keep security up. Thanks. I’ll be in Italy by tomorrow afternoon.” He hangs up and sighs so heavy it sounds like he’s trying to crush his lungs right out.

Then he goes back inside.

He’s gone by the time Tsuna wakes up the next morning.

* * *

  **\- Idler -**

* * *

 

Tsuna isn’t the type to cry and break down.

A lot of people tell him he’s a quiet kid. They say he’s very well-behaved. Tsuna thinks it’s more like he’s just waiting for a reason to not cry; he cries plenty, if he’s not distracted by the time the tears start welling up.

So he doesn’t cry when Papa leaves. He just nods sadly and doesn’t eat breakfast and goes to visit the neighbourhood housewives.

He has to go through four houses before one of them lets him help her clean her kitchen. Most of them don’t know Mama all that well. He prepares the proper levels of water and soap and squeezes it until it’s only a little damp so it doesn’t ruin the hardwood of the dining room Tsuna has took upon himself to clean too.

“Strange boy,” the housewife says. He doesn’t remember her name. “Do you clean when you’re upset? My mother did that.”

Tsuna shakes his head. “I don’t feel like playing, but I got nothing to do.”

He scrubs at a coffee splatter while she works on the counters. She watches him work.

“Gosh, you are tiny for your age,” she says after a while.

“I know.”

“You haven’t made any friends to play with?”

Tsuna’s shoulders hunch. The other kids don’t like him much; he always figures things out before they do and bosses them around and tells them what to do because he picked it up so fast. The teachers call him smart but he thinks his brain just moves way too fast for normal kids.

“Are you in first grade?”

“I haven’t started grades yet. We go to the community centre instead.” He dunks his mop and squeezes it almost-dry again. “They teach us stuff like what to do when you’re in trouble and what kind of people are bad people and, uhm, holidays.”

“Ohhh. I wasn’t born here, I didn’t know.”

“Not everyone does it. Mama says she gets extra stuff because of, uhm,” he knocks the mop handle against his forehead. “All the people we meet at Obon.”

“At Obon?”

“I saw it last year. There was dancing and then, uhm, a cave, and putting lanterns on the river for all the dead people? And all of my family is there. They’re really annoying but because we know them we always get extra tips in the community centre so we _have_ to go, because it’s kind of a good deal.”

“Ohhh, the clan rites you do in Hakuyou, yes, Nana told me you do that. It’s not really a national holiday, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s really important in Namimori though.” Tsuna finishes his mopping and takes a rag to wipe down the table.

“I think I might celebrate this year,” she says thoughtfully.

They finish cleaning and she serves him tea and biscuits in the backyard. When he’s done, he stands in front of his house for twenty minutes before going to the tree in his backyard and falling asleep there. His Mama calls him back when dinner’s ready. He doesn’t eat much.

* * *

  **\- Festival -**

* * *

 

Tsuna doesn’t know much about Obon.

When July is good and cooking them till they’re sweat oceans, Mama takes him out while it’s still late but the sky is bright, because that’s how summer works.

There’s a trail of people walking through the forest with them. Tsuna rubs his eyes sleepily through the whole walk. He thinks they might be heading for Kokuyou Healthy Land, but they walk right over the road that goes that way. The mosquito repellent tingles at his nostrils.

In Hakuyou, there’s a tower-thingy and people with fans on their heads dance around to old-type music. Tsuna is immediately bored. He sees a lot of people with red hair, and guesses this is where Kunihiro came from. He doesn’t see Kunihiro himself. Tsuna wonders if he got beat up for sneaking.

Then the people split up into three groups and there’s even more hiking, up a bunch of stone steps, and it takes _forever,_ until it’s dusk and the sky is more night than sunshine. They’re halfway up Namimori mountain, now, in front of a giant stone door. Tsuna fell asleep around this point last year.

“Sit still,” a mother tells her young daughter.

Mama looks at them sadly. Tsuna clutches her hand tighter even though he doesn’t really know why.

The group was led by two people; one has a bucket of water and one has a lantern-looking thing. Tsuna watches the person with the lantern go up to the door and hold it out.

It glows with a blue that makes his heart ache.

The door opens up while Tsuna is distracted with how bright the light inside the lantern is, and they head inside. There’s only one room, with a line of graves. Everyone takes turns taking water from the bucket and splashing them over the graves. Even Tsuna gets a turn, just like the grown-ups do.

Then they head down the mountain again. At the bottom, the people from the third group have a bunch of paper lanterns ready, all of them glowing like the blue lantern did.

Tsuna and his Mama each take one, and put it on the river as the third-group-leader-person talks about stuff Tsuna doesn’t really get, beyond the stuff he already knows about normal-people Obon.

“The river is where their graves meet,” the man recites. “The water is where their hands are clasped. The progeny protect the bond of family, no matter the distance…”

He and Mama go home right after that, even though there’s celebration-type stuff. She says she doesn’t get along with a lot of their family, even though they all looked happy to see them. Tsuna doesn’t like them, so he’s okay with not talking to them. He falls asleep on the way home.

* * *

  **\- Searchlight -**

* * *

 

The community centre has only two rooms for educating kids, and the rest of them are for parents. They don’t talk about much except all the tips but the teacher will always swing by and whisper important stuff in his ear so Tsuna thinks he’s plenty ahead of other kids.

During snacktime he decides the teacher likes telling him stuff so he’s a good person to ask.

“Sensei,” he says softly, “What’s the mafia?”

“The…” The teacher looks at him with a really…strange kinda look. “Why do you ask.”

“Dunno. Just wondering.”

“They’re a type of organized criminal. Like the yakuza.”

“Oh.” Tsuna loses his will to ask for more and says “Okay thanks” and goes to eat his snacks alone in the corner like usual.

He feels the teacher’s eyes on him for the rest of the class.

* * *

  **\- Loneliness -**

* * *

 

Tsuna turns seven in October.

There’s no sign of his Papa coming back.

He looks things up on the internet instead. He thinks quickly and goes through terms faster, until he hits a dead end at ‘is this revolutionary communications company actually the MAFIA’ and Tsuna has to think yeah, probably, because it’s the only mention of the mafia anywhere anyway.

He takes out an Italian-Japanese book out from the library four times in a row and looks up words his Papa might know.

One night, while his Mama is reading up in her room, Tsuna finds a half-empty bottle of alcohol. It smells like Papa, but without the extra smells of steel and earth and something rich that makes him feel safe. His Papa has never given him much more than a cup, but when he tastes it, it seems fine.

He drains the whole thing while using an audiotape to really nail the pronunciation of _‘Io sono suo figlio’._

* * *

  **\- Spring -**

* * *

 

First grade is when Tsuna thinks there might actually be something wrong with him, because during a math test he finishes a chapter and the teacher tells him he was only supposed to do one page. He did sixteen.

He writes in kanji while most of the kids around him have only just mastered hiragana. His knowledge of katakana is flawless. His strokes are messy and hard-to-read but they come naturally to him.

Science is harder because even though he’s obviously thinking much, _much_ faster than his peers, he can’t actually remember things all that well, and in the order they have to be, so he’s _terrible_ at science.

After a while they give him a workbook called the Halo book with a picture of a sun haloing a mountain top. He slows down a lot when he uses that workbook instead. No one talks about latent genius or anything. Just ‘it happens, sometimes’. But the way they look at him, he knows they’re sort of thinking about it.

A teacher takes him aside and asks if he’s interested in leadership classes and all he remembers is the time he shoved a kid to the ground because he wouldn’t listen to Tsuna when he said that the dirt clods lining the tiny little cliff wouldn’t support them and the boy threw a rock at Tsuna and used handholds on the stone instead, because he already knew that the clods wouldn’t work, and Tsuna was just a know-it-all.

He says no.

He hides in the closet later that night and listens to his mom tell his dad about how wonderful he’s doing in school. He closes his eyes and hears how proud his dad is from the way his mom reacts to him. He feels like he’s glowing.

He’s not all that happy, though.

 

* * *

**\- Valentine -**

* * *

 

As spring moves into summer and Tsuna gets more used to the Halo workbooks, he feels more self-confident. He thinks he can go outside _all by himself,_ thank-you-very-much. His mom still tells him he’s not allowed to go beyond the grocery store. But he can go to the _grocery store_ all by himself. Thank you very much.

He’s got a two-litre of milk clutched in both hands with bags dangling from his arms, almost home, when he sees someone he recognizes just across the street.

He stares after him, long and hard, and decides he can at least talk to him.

“Mr. Valentin,” Tsuna calls. Valentin swivels to look at him. He looks mostly the same. Maybe kinda stressed.

“Tsunayoshi-kun. Running errands?”

“Yeah. Mom lets me go out by myself now. Are you still guarding Grandpa?”

“Wh— oh, goodness no. I live here, didn’t I mention that?”

“I heard Kokuyou Land is gonna close down soon, though?”

“Oh, yes, it will. But we’re moving all our things to Namimori hospital. I’ll be around here more often.”

Tsuna adjusts his grip on the milk. He scuffs his foot awkwardly against the pavement.

“…Did you…is, uhm…”

“Yes?”

“…Is Gra…Is Grandpa Timoteo in the…is he like, mafia? With my dad?”

Valentin’s friendly expression fades.

He tilts his head. “How’d you come to that thought?”

“I overheard my dad.”

“Tsunayoshi-kun, that’s a little…” He sighs, and runs a hand through his hair. “Listen, why don’t you drop by my house later. It’s best if you understand that sort of thing from the perspective of someone used to living with it.”

“So it’s true?” Tsuna feels vindicated and sad at the same time.

“Just…” He scribbles down an address and stuffs it into Tsuna’s jacket pocket. “Come by.”

* * *

  **\- Jasmine -**

* * *

 

“Sorry, I only have Jasmine tea,” Valentin says.

Tsuna has no idea what that tastes like and Valentin doesn’t hold it out for Tsuna to sniff, so he just says “that’s okay.”

They chat about what they’ve been up to since they last met, and Tsuna feels incredibly adult doing it. It feels just like his mom chatting with her friends. He thinks he was a really dumb six-year-old, but now he’s grown up, probably. At least a little bit, anyway.

“I was actually hired to do some research, but it involves a small amount of human experimentation, but I don’t have a bunch of extra humans around…doing it on myself is taking a lot out of me,” Valentin groans.

“Could I help?”

Valentin looks at him.

And he smiles.

* * *

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* * *

**\- Morning -**

* * *

 

He wakes up on the bed with an ache on his arm.

Valentin is in the kitchen, mulling over his papers. Tsuna rolls off. He’s not wearing any socks and his pants have been carefully rolled up. When he touches them, he realizes they’ve been shot too, but they aren’t as sore as the band-aid on his arm.

“Does the one on the arm hurt extra? Like when the needle goes in?”

“Oh? Ah, yeah, it’s why I suggested putting you under. Even adults can’t take that one.” Valentin barely looks at him.

Tsuna looks at his papers. They’re all in a weird language Tsuna doesn’t recognize.

He points at the top. “What’s that one say?”

“Hm? Oh, Проект Зелёная дверь?”

That sounds like a whole lot of different-sounding words for something that’s full of letters that look the same.

“What’s it mean?”

“Secret. It’s already six, you should head home.”

“Oh. ‘Kay.” Tsuna hesitates. “Did I help?”

Valentin actually looks at him this time, smile warm and wide and sure.

“Of course you did, Tsuna.”

Tsuna glows, and this time he _does_ feel happy.

* * *

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* * *

  **\- Afternoon -**

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Tsuna heaves into the toilet.

Valentin rubs his back. “I told you two days in a row was a bad idea.”

It feels like something is seeping into him through the hand, but when Tsuna reaches back to check after he leaves, there’s nothing there.

 

* * *

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* * *

**\- Evening -**

* * *

 

Tsuna’s vision swims over his homework. The normal stuff was fine, but the workbook is hard to think about. He finishes his math equations and curls up into a ball.

He thinks he just doesn’t want to. It feels like an ache in the pit of his stomach.

He goes to bed and the teacher says something about ‘plateaus’ the next day.

* * *

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* * *

**\- Night -**

* * *

 

“What’s your family like?”

Valentin stirs his tea idly. “I didn’t get along with them.”

“I don’t think I get along with mine either. Not even my dad.” Tsuna buries his face into his arms. “…I haven’t seen him since I was _six_.”

“That wasn’t all that long ago.”

“Yeah it was! He didn’t even do anything with me. He just wanted to talk to other adults. He doesn’t take me seriously at all. He treats me like a little _kid._ ”

Valentin laughs. “Oh, I think you’re a little more mature than _that_. I’ve seen the average kid, and you’re nothing like them.”

Tsuna takes a sip of jasmine tea. He’s overwhelmed with the desire to spit it out, but manages to swallow.

It still tastes good. He thinks he just sort of…doesn’t want tea right now.

He wishes Valentin would buy a different kind.

* * *

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  **\- A -**

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The dishes clatter under his hands. He has a headache but he’d rather work than lie in bed.

His mom pokes her head in to check what he’s doing and laughs when she sees him perched on his little stool. “Tsu-kun, you’ve been doing so many chores lately. If you keep going like that I won’t have anything left to do!”

“It’s okay. I’m an adult now.”

She snorts. “You won’t be an adult for _years_ , so you don’t have to worry about that.”

Tsuna stares at the soapy water. The sinking feeling in his stomach gets so bad he has to step away. He hides under the table while she finishes up and gets to cooking, doing nothing but picking at the label of one of his father’s sake bottles. He doesn’t finish his dinner, and doesn’t move from the couch afterwards, he just watches his mother’s needle go in and out of the fabric of her cross-stitch pattern.

The feeling doesn’t go away until he wakes up the next day with body heat laying right beside him. He peers up at his mother’s face. Her eyes drift open and she smiles.

“Good morning.”

Tsuna suddenly feels like he can breathe.

* * *

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  **\- B -**

* * *

 

“Happy eighth birthday!”

Tsuna stares at the confetti drifting to his feet. He’s already gotten used to tuning out the queasy feeling in his stomach whenever he visits Valentin’s apartment.

“Thank you.” He smiles, and even though he doesn’t feel all that good right now, at least that’s genuine.

Valentin got him a stuffed monkey. The tag sewn into its paw says ‘Kokuyou Healthy Land’ along with a picture of a bunch of fruit.

“A souvenir from before it closed down.”

The queasy feeling claws at him. He hugs it to his chest.

“Thank you. I love it.”

* * *

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  **\- C -**

* * *

 

The first time he misses an appointment with Valentin, it’s with Sasagawa Kyouko’s hand clutching his.

It’s okay. He doesn’t usually wake up with a sore arm and Valentin sitting at the table nowadays. It’s not like he’s missing anything important.

The weight in his stomach has bubbled up to clog his throat as the clock moves past the time he was supposed to go to the apartment, and he has no appetite. He watches her brother imitate the boxers on his massive collection of VHS tapes while she practices tying bandages on Tsuna’s hands. After a while she gets bored and paints his nails instead.

On his walk home, they gleam perfectly pink, like the insides of tropical shells, reflecting the sunset. He stares at them until dusk, and for the first time in over a year, he finishes off his entire plate at dinnertime.

* * *

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  **\- D -**

* * *

 

They catch him on a boat headed to South Korea.

He had meant to hide in the boxes, but they loaded him up and he thought it might be nice, so he hadn’t bothered to climb out again. The only reason anyone saw him was because he had climbed out to investigate.

They tell his mom he was in an internet cafe. He thinks his mom would be super upset if she found out he randomly decided he was okay with going to Korea, so he goes along with them even though he smells like ocean. A man in a bright red shirt spritzes him with cologne when Tsuna mentions this.

At the end of it, one woman with red hair lingers by the gate after everyone else leaves and his mom has gone inside to get some sort of information packet for her.

She looks at Tsuna with a grim sort of expression. “Hey, kid. Is there…is there a friend of yours you visit sometimes? Maybe someone your age?”

Tsuna stares at the pavement between their feet. His heart hammers right up to his ears.

“…Kyouko,” he mutters.

“Hm?”

“Kyouko. She’s my age.”

The woman doesn’t look satisfied.

Tsuna doesn’t go to school the next day. He has to look really hard to find another sake bottle, and the one he gets is full, sitting on top of the cupboards. The heat chases away the terror that had curled up in a ball and sat there in his stomach like a hunk of lead, and it’s the only reason he feels comfortable sleeping.

He doesn’t cry.

He’s not really the type to cry.

* * *

  **\- E -**

* * *

 

Taking a shower and doing his stretches is pretty much routine now. He makes sure there’s no bruises. There never is, but it always hurts like there might be. There’s always a change of clothes waiting for him when he wakes up.

He burns the old ones inside the ruins of the Kokuyou buildings for fun. They always give off a lot of smoke, so he sits far, far away, and watches it billow up.

Eventually, he tosses the monkey in there too.

There’s a few urban explorers that are always wandering around this area during the fall season, just after the leaves have fallen off the trees, but they give him a wide berth. He’s been asked for directions once or twice.

He doesn’t really answer them, but he’s always got the pamphlets.

* * *

  **\- F -**

* * *

 

Tsuna isn’t really motivated to exist, lately; his grades have plunged from ‘not doing homework’ to ‘lessons not sticking at all’ to ‘cartoonishly incompetent’. He tends to stumble a lot because sometimes he’s still sore, and sometimes he drags his feet more than he has to and trips over them. His reactions are half-hearted and slow, and no one wants him on their sports team.

Kyouko’s answer to this is to do an exchange diary, which is like writing letters but with one book. Kyouko’s diary pages are always full of all the fun and interesting stuff she does. Tsuna doesn’t do a lot of interesting things. He stares off into space a lot and has trouble reading. He goes into the forest just for the sake of something to write down. He tries to go about it like a novelist would, because there’s nothing inherently interesting about a bunch of trees. Something something atmosphere something something birdsong.

One time, he goes on the weekend he was supposed to see Valentin. He gets lost and ends up by a waterfall, an extension of the river they put the lanterns into. He takes his shoes off, and then he strips off his clothes too, and he swims in the frigid water. He imagines being washed downriver and drifting to whatever offshoot grave it leads to. He imagines doing it during Obon and another family fishing him out and raising him so he’ll never have to come to Namimori again.

He kicks into the waterfall and curls up into a ball there. At this point, he knows he’s mostly just waiting for someone to catch and confront him. This is the second time he’s missed Valentin’s appointment.

He said he needed Tsuna but all he’s done is…Tsuna isn’t entirely sure. Something sort of like what’s in H-videos, somehow. He knows how perverts are, and he doesn’t think Valentin is one, but he thinks he’s a terrible, terrible person for ignoring experiments for H-stuff.

He’s a terrible, terrible doctor.

He wants Valentin to appear from the trees and say ‘I’m a terrible doctor, Tsuna, I’m so sorry, I love you and you didn’t deserve this’.

The next monday he talks about how he sat under a waterfall like a martial artist and she writes back saying she told her brother and her brother thinks it’s awesome so he’s going to do it too.

Tsuna never goes back to the waterfall again.

* * *

**\- G -**

* * *

 

His hair gets really greasy really easily, lately. He’s been insistent on dying it the same colour as his mom’s, so now he looks nothing like the pictures on the wall from even a few months ago. He’d brush it, but he keeps forgetting to.

His mom took him to a doctor since dandruff and really oily heads don’t tend to go together. He diagnosed his scalp right off the bat and then rushed on to talk about birth defects. He kept giving his mom really concerned looks while he talks about genital development and horomones. Tsuna is at least half-sure that with the amount of times he brings up the fact Tsuna has ovaries, Tsuna definitely has some kind of tumor.

“I don’t really care,” Tsuna mumbles on the walk home.

“You don’t have to decide right now, but when you’re older and start puberty again, we’ll have to check. You don’t want to be a boy walking around with a figure like mine, do you?”

“I don’t really care,” he mumbles again.

“Your father thinks that you’re going to be just as manly as he is, you know.”

Tsuna cares even less.

* * *

  **\- H -**

* * *

 

He stands in front of apartment 213 and thinks _I don’t want to be here_.

* * *

  **\- I, -**

* * *

 

Tsuna goes to bed early and wakes up early. It’s been like this since he was eight.

There isn’t much to do, so he goes to the doorstep and sits there, looks up at the sky. It’s a nice sky. It’s always a nice sky.

It’s quiet, and the air is cool and crisp against his skin, and each step away from his door adds to the rising urge to escape.

He thinks he might jump into the river. It’s been haunting him, lately.

His mom always looks so worried around him. It makes him feel like he’s drowning. He just wants to go.

* * *

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* * *

  **\- Sawada Tsunayoshi -**

* * *

 

It always takes him a while to collect himself when he wakes up from whatever Valentin puts in his tea, but he didn’t really understand how long until his idle stroking of the bed’s new blanket is interrupted by voices.

“Not here,” says a woman chipperly.

“ _And what if he was?”_ A man. Tsuna blinks drowsily. He tries to push himself out of bed out of the half-formed intent to hide from strangers, but his arm buckles underneath him. He got a needle today. His limbs feel like jelly.

“Then we kick his ass. God you’re boring.” Footsteps. Tsuna flops back into bed and looks at the opening to the dining room. It’s a novelty for there to be people here to greet him when he wakes up, but he thinks he’s going to get in trouble if Valentin’s done something bad enough to get beat up for.

“Lives frugally,” man mutters.

“Hey, come take a look at this.”

Footsteps.

“This…how is the progress this advanced?”

“Pretty sure he’s being funded.”

“By _who_? He’s got no superiors left to answer to, and he should be cut off from new rease—” Tsuna thinks the man grabs the papers. “ _Oh._ ”

“Eugh. _Dark_.”

“Well, there’s your kill-on-sight.”

More footsteps.

“This?”

“That doesn’t match the count.”

“Right, there should be more in the desk over here—”

A man with cherry-red hair steps into the doorframe and looks right at him.

Tsuna holds the blanket up over his bare chest and slides under until only his eyes are uncovered.

The man stares. Tsuna feels like he can see his heart shattering just from his face alone.

“Oh god,” he whispers, then again, with a thin whine, “Oh god.”

“What?” The woman asks.

“Nana’s…”

Tsuna’s uneasy stomach roils. The guy knows him. He’s in _big_ trouble now.

“Wh— oh, oh,” the woman, black-haired, she goes loud where the man goes quiet. She looks about ready to explode. “Fuck, sick, _sick—_ ”

“No, I,” the man _sprints_ at him, and Tsuna ducks all the way under. The man yanks him right out again. “No! I can fix this! I can fix this, look at me, I can fix this!”

Tsuna starts tearing up and hiccuping. He’s dizzy and can’t think right and he doesn’t know how to get out of this. His mom is going to be _so_ mad.

“ **I can fix this,”** the man with the cherry hair breathes, clutching Tsuna’s shoulders. Tsuna’s vision swims.

“How?” The woman asked.

“…I can seal it away. I can…I can make it so he’ll never remember any of it.” A hand along his hair. “You want to forget all this ever happened, right? You don’t want to feel scared anymore?”

Tsuna actually doesn’t want to be in trouble, but he seems to be suggesting basically the same thing, so he nods slowly.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

“Wh- _NO_ , are you _KIDDING?_ Take him to dad! You’ve never done anything like this before!”

“If dad finds out, everyone will know. Do you want _half of Hakuyou_ knowing about this? That’s not fair to him!” The cherry-haired man snaps.

“But—”

“Not to mention— if Valentin doesn’t answer to anyone, he probably just…he can’t get punished if he has no one to answer to, you get that, so we can’t— we can’t make it political, we just.” He wrings his hands in the air. “We erase all of it.”

The woman jerks. “What?”

“We never found anything. Everything. We’ll get rid of all of it. Tsuna can go home and nothing will be wrong.”

Tsuna nods again. This sounds like a great idea.

“Do you have any idea what dad will do if he—”

“If he _finds out?_ Haha, _I will burn this whole complex down if I have to._ Just…” He turns back to Tsuna and holds his head in his hands. “It’s okay. I’ve mastered pretty much all of the other techniques. This is going to be easy. I’ll show you. _I’ll show you_. I’ll fix all of it and it’ll be fine.”

His hands are trembling against Tsuna’s cheeks. They’re warm and kind of sweaty. The man’s thumbs press against his temples, and there’s a pleasant buzzing just underneath them that echoes inside Tsuna’s skull. He closes his eyes and enjoys it.

“No— don’t close your eyes.” Tsuna opens them.

“Look at me.” Tsuna looks at him.

His eye glow orange. It’s beautiful, like the colour of Kyouko’s nailpolish in the sunset. “Now listen to me. **You’re going to forget.”**

* * *

  **\- Sawada Tsunayoshi -**

* * *

 

Tsuna wakes up feeling like his head is full of cotton.

He goes through the motions sloppily, putting his clothes on, brushing his teeth, eating, leaving the house.

He has a key to Valentin’s apartment but he stands in front of the door of the building itself for a while, just staring at it. He does this sometimes. But he has to go in at some point, so he forces himself to turn the key.

He’s numbed himself to the visits a long time ago, and the cotton-feeling isn’t helping. He drifts aimlessly down the halls, and misses door 213 three times before he realizes he’s been moving with his eyes closed half the time. He makes sure to count to get to the right door.

He’s not feeling well. Maybe they can just talk today.

Tsuna roughly grabs the door and turns. It doesn’t budge. He struggles to put the key in, and practically falls into the apartment when the doors open. There’s no heavy-stomach feeling, just complete disorientation.

There’s no pad for his shoes, and no welcome mat.

Tsuna’s gaze lifts up.

There are no pictures on the walls. There is no scent except the soapy citrus of cleaning solution. The door to Valentin’s office is open, revealing empty space.

Tsuna slowly walks in, examining the spotless, tidy kitchen with no sign of tea spills and dustings of sugar, no notes pinned up with research notes in chickenscratch Russian.

There is no table, or cushions. The floor is newly vacuumed. The bedroom is a gaping nothingness. Out of morbid curiousity, he examines the bathroom for any signs of him, but it’s been scrubbed clean.

He wanders into the empty sitting room, looking out to the wide, uncurtained sliding door to the balcony.

There’s no one here. It feels almost like no one’s ever lived here. Like maybe he dreamed all of it.

First comes a surge of relief that hits him so hard he falls to his knees. The dizziness makes him numb, the welcome kind of numb, like he was slowly being crushed and now there’s no sign of pain at all, just nothing, nothing, _nothing being able to hurt him again_. It makes his head spin harder than the tea ever did.

And then he actually thinks about what this means.

It means…it means he’s alone.

Not the kind of alone where he wakes up and Valentin is gone to take care of something because Tsuna’s going to be out for hours and he can’t wait for him to wake up. Not the kind where Tsuna has to sit in the kitchen alone staring off into space for hours until a trembling Valentin spots him and screams at him to _get out, he’s not in the mood_.

Not the kind of alone where he has the power to be whatever kind of alone he wants to be, where he could run off and no one has the power to stop him. Not the kind of alone where he wanders into town in his pajamas and the weight of it doesn’t even occur to him until someone picks him up and drops him off at home with a stern lecture.

It’s the kind of alone where he goes to bed wondering why his dad was so mad and waking up finding out he left without saying goodbye.

It’s the kind of alone where Tsuna’s stomach sinks further and further until he thinks his throat and his brain and his heart and just about everything else is going to collapse right down with it, until Kyouko shows up apologizing for being late.

He’s been left behind.

He sits there on his knees and turns that over in his cloudy, cotton-stuffed head.

He’s been left behind, and he’s been expecting this to happen.

And now he doesn’t have to come here anymore.

All of his insides tighten at once.

Now he doesn’t have a Valentin anymore, gossiping just like adults do, speaking in unintelligible Russian when he’s trying to communicate how annoying his coworkers are, sharing tea with him and saying _I was worried about where my research was going, I’m so happy you’re helping me with this_.

He blinks at his stinging eyes until a single tear spills over, followed by another, and another, until they’re streaking endlessly down his cheeks, and he tilts his head back and lets out a single wail. It chokes off with sobs, and he crumples bonelessly onto the carpet, full of nothing but a jumble of horrible confusing emotions that he can’t put a name to except _hurt._

He’s been left behind.

* * *

**\- Death -**

* * *

 

His dad visits while he’s still ten, only a few weeks after Valentin’s disappearance.

Tsuna goes on a fishing trip with him and spends the rest of the time lying around staring off into space.

“Hormones,” his dad says coyly.

His mom doesn’t say anything in a really pointed way that makes his dad frown for a moment, but there is no conversation about Tsuna’s doctor’s appointment or the implants. So he tries cheering Tsuna up by sharing his saké with him. It does help, actually; Tsuna ends up giggly and curled up into his dad’s shoulder, thinking about how firm it felt when he was just six.

It’s the first step in accepting that the Valentin appointments were never a big deal, actually, and he probably should have stopped going to them a long time ago anyway. By the end of the second week, Tsuna feels well enough to actually to eat out at a family restaurant and laugh at his dad’s stories. It takes a bit of effort; the cotton-headed feeling never really went away, and it always gets worse when he tries to force himself out of his spacey episodes.

Grandpa Timoteo visits during his dad’s second month home. Tsuna is playing videogames on the sitting room TV while he and his dad drink.

On a whim, Tsuna turns to look at Grandpa Timoteo and asks “what kind of person was your watch-man?”

“Hm?” Timoteo looks away from his phone.

“The man you left to watch me, when I was six. He took me to dad and gave me a shot.”

Timoteo’s expression smooths over, and Tsuna feels like he’s said something horribly, horribly wrong.

“…Tsunayoshi…The person I left to look after you was a _woman_.”

Fear prickles along Tsuna’s spine, but he does his best to not react. He says “oh” and saves his game and head upstairs and tries very, very hard not to think about it. The inconsistencies and little factors are like knives raking over his perception of Valentin, which was shaky and full of conflicted feelings to begin with.

He falls asleep with the image of the spray of red across Valentin’s sleeve still hovering in his mind.

* * *

  **\- Dead-Eyed Tsuna -**

* * *

 

Kurokawa Hana attends their middle school, in the end, and Tsuna watches her with no small amount of wariness.

He doesn’t think much of what he was doing from ages eight to ten, because he wasn’t really doing much at all except feeling awful and being exploited by someone he already knew was a criminal. In the three years since then, the most he got out of it is the paranoid twitchiness when Kyouko says she can’t hang out with him and a genuinely good reason to hate himself.

He accommodates, like he usually does. He doesn’t ask her for anything, and bends over backwards to make their friendship convenient for her. Kyouko always just drifts into his peripheral, and that way, the sting of rejection never comes. He thinks he resents Hana a little anyway, since she doesn’t ever seem bothered by being blown off.

Kyouko gets him, though, so he doesn’t have to worry.

He almost settles. Then, only a few months later, Tsuna opens his eyes as his arms vibrate with the weight of a tonfa strike, and he sees someone who looks at him like he if he ever left Tsuna behind, it would be _Tsuna’s_ fault for not keeping up. It’s confusing, and actually a little offensive.

For the first time in years, though, Tsuna looks at someone and doesn’t feel scared of being near them.

Not in the traditional sense, anyway.

* * *

  **\- End -**

* * *

 

“That’s all I know, _I promise_ ,” Tsuna insists.

Hibari makes a discontented noise, like he understands, but doesn’t care, because he’s already decided he’s unhappy and he’s not going to quit here.

“What even is the Varia?” Tsuna hops to keep up with Hibari’s long-legged stride. “Hayato says it’s an assassination squad but I forgot most of it.”

“A specialist unit under the direct jurisdiction of…a mafia family,” Hibari reels off as if reciting from something he’s read, and tapers off, like he read the name once, but promptly forgot about it, which Tsuna finds immediately relatable. “They’re a factor in the power structure of the Italian underworld.”

“’Be my friend and I’ll loan you my killmen’ kind of power structure?”

Hibari gives him a Look.

The helicopter had taken them to a remote location, where there is a big private jet with no markings on the exterior. It’s extremely ominous. Also ominous is the fact the helicopter left the moment they touched pavement and there isn’t anyone here to greet them. Hibari doesn’t seem to care, though, so Tsuna pretends he doesn’t either.

“Why are you so bothered, anyway? Afraid they might kill me?”

“ _Bothered_ you’re now involved in the power structure of the Italian Underworld. You belong strictly to me. I also think very poorly of Italians.”

At least he’s honest?

“It’ll only be a few days, I guess.” Tsuna stops in front of the stairs to the jet, unsure if he’s supposed to go inside or not. “…I don’t think I want to go back to school right now anyway.”

“With the reckless disregard for rules you’ve already exhibited, if you did return, you would spend most of your days in the infirmary.” Hibari soars past him into the jet, Hatachi trailing at his heels.

“I don’t like being threatened,” Tsuna mutters. “Not that you care.”

“Get in here. Your phone is buzzing.”

Tsuna takes a deep breath through his nose and stomps up to meet Hibari inside.

Despite all the fantastical impressions of what private jets look like inside, Tsuna finds it looks pretty normal overall. It’s not really that big, and the entry point sits between cramped booths similar to airplane chairs. Hibari plops Tsuna’s bag onto a nearby table and wanders towards the tail.

Towards the front is a couch, coffee table, bar, mini-fridge and a TV, forming a small sitting room. Tsuna has drunk far too much to be comfortable with raiding it right now, but he’ll probably hit it up by morning. In the direction Hibari had set off is, predictably, a big-ass bed, complete with nightstand. Just behind it seems to be the toilet.

Overall, awesome, but not especially jarring.

“Have you ever been on a private jet?”

“Yes.” Hibari investigates the drawers of the nightstand while removing his shoes and socks.

“Where to?”

“Hokkaido. I’ve also taken a limo to Tokyo.”

“How often do you leave Namimori?”

“Infrequently. I haven’t left once in the past five years. Answer your phone.”

Tsuna quickly digs into his bag and takes out his phone. He has missed a _lot_ of texts. They are literally all from Hacchan.

“Does Hayato even have my number?” Tsuna wonders aloud, because the idea of Hayato having it and not contacting him is completely ludicrous.

Actually, Hana sending him a bunch of messages unprompted is worrisome. Almost all of them have no subject line. He starts flipping through them.

_**3:21PM - Subject: back in town** _

_Don’t have anyone’s contact information, info won’t get around fast_

_Gokudera got stolen and he can’t text me because dumbass doesn’t have a cellphone_

_**3:50PM - Subject:** _

_nvm kyouko has everyone’s numbers because of course she does_

_**4:31PM - Subject:** _

_Kyouko went to check on ur house because of course she did_

_Its your dad!!!! Wtf!!!!!!!_

 

It occurs to Tsuna that the only one who knows about his Vaguely Mafia Father is Hayato. Must have been a big shock. It’s Hana, though, so he can’t really bring himself to feel bad. Kyouko doesn’t know what happened, so she probably enjoyed meeting the man for the first time.

 

_**5:06PM - Subject:** _

_Am now Gokudera’s messenger because no one knows anyone’s numbers_

_There’s an Italian guy in Oogawa’s house. V hot._

_Oogawa is wearing bandages for no reason and he wouldn’t let me talk to him or hot Italian dude_

_**5:30PM - Subject:** _

_Miura-san gave me address to Miura home_

_Haru-chan makes her own clothes omgggg these designs are so freakin cuuuuute_

_**6:11PM - Subject:** _

_Getting late so I threw a rock at Irie-kun’s house and he yelled at me. Seems ok_

_**6:30PM - Subject:** _

_Takeshi-kun texted Kyouko to text me that he got home with our junk!!!_

_Also he’s like mute? For some reason?_

_**6:40PM - Subject:** _

_He says his meds messed him up really bad and he’s kind of out of it_

_He keeps falling down and spacing out so like? Twinsies for u guys_

_Gokudera showed up at Kyouko’s house so I’m going to go chase him off_

_**6:49PM - Subject:** _

_Gokudera and Onii-san got in screaming match_

_Now Kyouko is mad at Onii-san bc he is hiding stuff_

_**7:00PM - Subject:** _

_Going to have sleepover, might bring up the mafia (good ones)_

_**7:10PM - Subject:** _

_KYOUKO IS PSYCHIC SO ONII-SAN CAN SUCK IT TBHHHHHHHH_

 

Tsuna takes a moment’s pause, wondering if that’s hyperbole or not. The next series of texts do not clarify.

 

_**7:24PM - Subject:** _

_Gokudera ditched to go check up on Takeshi-kun_

_He keeps texting Kyouko a play-by-play on how freakin messed up Takeshi-kun is_

_**7:28PM - Subject:** _

_I think Takeshi-kun is starting to scare him lol_

_**7:32PM - Subject:** _

_Just described Takeshi-kun as ‘a starving animal on the hunt’_

_Why is your tutor so FREAKING weird jw_

_**7:36PM - Subject:** _

_Takeshi-kun commandeered, phone, is now sending us selfies_

_We are having selfie-off. Obv we look way better_

 

The next few texts are just images from said selfie-off. The first one is Takeshi, who looks absolutely terrible. His tan has dimmed to a mottled grey that does little to ease the look of the dark circles under his eyes, and his normally-bright lips are colourless and chapped. His left eye is bloodshot. The gunshot wound looks exactly the same, at least. Regardless of the state of his health, he looks pleased, face pulled into an amiable grin. Hayato is writing something down on a paper pad, oblivious to the picture.

The next photo is of Hayato by himself, looking at the camera with a disinterested, cursory glance. He looks both healthy and emotionally stable, which is good, because Tsuna doesn’t really know Hayato well enough to know what would happen if that wasn’t the case, and he isn’t comfortable with the idea of leaving him to his own devices while that gap in knowledge still exists.

The third picture is of them both posing together. Well, Takeshi is; Hayato is staring blankly at the camera, again. He looks like he doesn’t understand the concept of photos and is exasperated with Takeshi’s insistence on creating them.

The next is of Kyouko holding the phone up for a peace-sign with Hana, who is holding one up too. Her legs are propped up to hold a magazine. They look okay too. Tsuna feels himself unwind, and he slides into the booth to enjoy them fully.

Next one is Hayato, looking way more irritated, shoving a Takeshi out of frame so he’s too blurry to make out.

The one after that is Kyouko and Hana squished into the frame, cheek-to-cheek, looking happy.

The next is Takeshi lying on a futon, with Gokudera behind him propped up against a wall surrounded by books, back to ignoring the picture-taking. Takeshi is smiling with his eyebrows quirked up in exasperation, but he still looks genuinely happy.

Suddenly, Tsuna feels an aching _unwellness._ He can’t quite place it, but seeing the four of them interact like this is slowly layering an overwhelming sensation of dread that he can’t shake.

He skips through the rest of them.

 

_**8:21PM - Subject:** _

_Gokudera’s sleeping over at Takeshi-kun’s place bc ur dad has zero boundaries_

_We’re dropping by Takesushi’s for BIG MEETING_

_if ur back by tomorrow morning thats where we are_

 

The unwellness rears up again and he snaps his phone shut even though there’s four more texts to go, including the one making his phone go off.

Then he turns to look, without consciously meaning to, at Hibari.

Hibari, who is steadily hacking away at a fistful of hair with a pair of small silver scissors.

“ _WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”_ Tsuna jumps to his feet and drops his phone without thinking.

“Cutting my hair,” Hibari replies.

“WHY?”

Hibari cuts off a hunk of hair. Judging from the nightstand, it looks to be his second one. “Inconvenient.”

Tsuna waves his hands in the air in helpless objection. For as long as Hibari has been a recorded entity, his hair has been styled in exactly the same way. In fact, for as long as Kusakabe has been a recorded entity, _his_ hair has been exactly the same. The stubborn refusal to break from standard is Hibari’s defining character trait.

The scissors come up to a third clump. Tsuna grabs Hibari by the arm to stop him. “Since when has inconvenient hair stopped you?”

“Since it was grabbed.” Hibari effortlessly twirls the scissors in his hand and stabs Tsuna with them. Tsuna yelps and switches hands. “He enjoyed it far too much.”

“And you punished him for it! _With interest!”_

“I know, but there’s a possibility others will think to do the same. It’ll be easier to avoid and punish them for trying if it’s shorter. I’m cutting it.”

Tsuna looks Hibari dead in his haughty, disinterested eyes and understands that no matter what Tsuna says, he will disagree, emphatically, mostly just on principle. He’s already decided to cut his hair. He’s gone through two clumps already. It’s irreversible.

“…At least let me do it.”

Surprisingly, Hibari doesn’t even bother thinking about it; he just places the scissors in Tsuna’s hands. He’s rich though, so he’s probably used to getting groomed by other people.

Tsuna hasn’t cut hair since he was ten and Kyouko asked him to cut hers down, and he doesn’t think he did a good job, but whatever he does, it’ll probably better than whatever Hibari was going to do _without a mirror_. Hibari moves from the carpeted bedroom to the tiled sitting room to perch on the coffee table, and Tsuna hovers uncertainly, before focusing on shortening the clump he was just about to shear off.

When he digs his fingers in, he shivers involuntarily. Hibari’s hair isn’t like Takeshi or Tsuna’s wiry tuffs; it’s smooth, silky, and deceptively thin, like running his hand through flour. Not the kind of hair that sticks up in accordance to anything except the breeze. He’d shear it all the way down to accommodate, but Tsuna doesn’t really have enough skill to do that.

He pulls the clump away, and notes Hibari has a whorl. Maybe it _does_ stick up, a little. Tsuna decides a haircut similar to Miki’s would make sense; even though Miki’s hair is coarse too, it’s the kind of cut that looks normal on any type of hair. Probably. The fringe should the longest point, still cut short, and then gradually fading into a shorter cut. Seems simple.

Tsuna takes off the remainder of Hibari’s fringe, so Hibari now has a mullet. It looks ridiculous, and Tsuna snips off the hair at the nape of his neck so Hibari won’t stab his eyes out for laughing.

The next few minutes are quiet. Tsuna isn’t even sure if their jet has a pilot, but it doesn’t really matter. There’s only the gentle hum of electronics and the soft _snip snip_ of scissors through hair.

“Would be nice if I had something to catch the hair,” Tsuna notes to himself. He’d say wet hair would help, but to be honest, he’s not sure if he can figure out where the hell he’s supposed to cut if it were all matted down, no matter how convenient it would be to the cutting itself.

The action is so particular he doesn’t have room to focus on much else, but sometimes his eyes trail down, mostly to check on how Hibari is feeling about all this. He doesn’t react to Tsuna pulling gently at his hair, or snipping near his ears. He looks like he might have fallen asleep, if it weren’t for how he’s leaning on the table.

Tsuna’s attention drifts to the smooth, elegant, unfolded curve of Hibari’s closed eyes. They’re thin and the downward slant is severe, but the eyelashes are long and full. His face is squared and full of hard angles, even though he hasn’t lost the baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. It looks distinctive enough for Tsuna to actually consider it. Hayato has an elongated face, but stretched to points; Hibari’s face is more broad and boxy. He’d always thought of Hibari’s appearance as distinctive, but it feels Northern, or...?

“Chinese?” he muses.

Hibari opens one eye. His eyebrows scrunch down.

“You,” Tsuna says haltingly, and he flushes and clears his throat to try again. “No, I wasn't saying you were, just that it felt like, that is to say…you have, uhm, strong features?”

“My mother,” Hibari says, and closes his eyes again.

“Oh. You really are— uh, do you speak any?” Tsuna pulls at his whorl. He’s not sure if he can cut this cleanly.

“I’m fluent in twelve languages. My second language was Yue Chinese. I picked up Taishanese after visiting Guangzhou. More familiarity with Cantonese was probably the objective of that trip, though.” Here Hibari gives a self-satisfied little smirk. Small triumphs?

“…You’ve left the country?”

“To increase the speed of my language acquisition. I hated it. I don’t enjoy leaving Namimori.”

The threat against Tsuna for his little Miyazawa outing is thinly veiled, but the attempt to veil it at all is appreciated. He can’t be _that_ mad.

“What language do you like better?”

“Dialects. And I prefer Taishanese.”

Tsuna starts in on the back of Hibari’s head. “Right. Sorry. How many languages do you know?”

“Twenty-eight.” Tsuna jerks in surprise. Hibari doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m fluent in all Asian languages, English, and Italian.”

“Oh my god,” Tsuna whispers. “I just know how to say ‘death’ in a few dozen ways in Italian.”

“Convenient, considering where we’re going.”

Tsuna makes a face and focuses on trimming back the rest of the hair on the back of Hibari’s head.

He should be surprised Hibari is so willing to talk to him considering how quiet he was before, but no one who hates talking would be willing to have a conversation this inane. In fact, looking back, it’s actually more likely that Hibari loves the sound of his own voice and simply didn’t deem Tsuna worthy of hearing it.

Tsuna decides to experiment. “What does Taishanese sound like?”

“Do you honestly expect to be able to tell the difference between them by ear?” Hibari asks, the smugness of the answer proving Tsuna’s hypothesis.

“I don’t hear _any_ foreign languages in my day-to-day life. I’m just curious.”

“Fine. Yue Chinese is a tonal language, and one dialect would be unintelligible to the other, even if it’s all the same to you. The sound is…” He hums, and it’s deep and throaty and really distracting. Then he reels off brief phrases (or words — Tsuna can’t tell). “唔好搞我. 唔該. 一種語言永遠不夠. That’s Cantonese.”

It’s easier to understand ‘tonal language’ when hearing the actual language itself — the level of expression is distinctive, and full of rises and falls and hard-to-distinguish kinda-vowels. Cantonese sounds pleasing to the ear, but the idea of learning it gives him anxiety; Japanese has 5 super-obvious vowels, and that is the only number of vowels anyone should have to use.

“Taishanese is still Yue Chinese. Mostly similar. Hm…乜個聽教仔.”

“…Sounds the same to me.”

“I told you.”

Tsuna wrinkles his nose and gets a bit of hair behind Hibari’s ear.

The pilot must have arrived, because the door closes while Tsuna attempts to get the top of Hibari’s head as even as possible without making it look uneven against the close-cut length around the back of his head. He fluffs it a few times until he’s satisfied that it doesn’t look _horrible_.

“Okay, I think I’m done.”

Hibari runs his fingers through his new haircut. His nose wrinkles too.

“Feels strange.”

“ _Then why did you cut it?”_

“I told you why.” Hibari stands. “The door is closed.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. We’re probably taking off soon.”

“About time.”

Tsuna puts the scissors back in his bag, because they’re _his_ scissors, and looks for a cupboard to stuff his bag in. There’s a lot of overhead storage in the sitting room area, but the spot just before the cockpit — which looks to be a giant metal box, so maybe there won’t be _any_ pilots — has a closet-looking thing, which is better for someone as short as he is.

It’s not empty, though. Inside is a black uniform, made of nylon and leather, with a white-and-red badge on the front embroidered with the bold letters ‘VONGOLA VARIA’. _Vongola Variation,_ or whatever. It comes in four sizes, with boots. Next to it sits a styrofoam head, and on the head is an indigo wig.

Tsuna turns it around in his hands. Unlike the red-brown wig, the hair is realistic-looking, and silky to the touch. It has a straight-cut fringe too, but it curls gently inward, and frames the face with small tufts of hair. It looks just as long as the old one, but this time with…well, it sort of looks like the hair has been tied into a knot. It’s sitting in a low-set sidetail, and descends into full, slightly-curled locks. It looks extremely expensive, and makes the plastic hairpiece he was wearing before seem like a lump of stringy garbage in comparison.

Tsuna wants to go back to bed, so he puts the head back. “There’s a change of clothes here.”

“What kind?” Hibari asks from where he’s stretched out languidly on the bed.

“Varia uniform.”

Hibari’s expression sours, but he doesn’t open his eyes.

“It’s probably for blending in,” Tsuna goes on to say. The jet jerks under his feet, and he can feel them start to move. “We don’t have a driver.”

“The jet is a drone. Our pilot is already in Italy, controlling our passage.”

“…You ride a lot of these?”

“They’re convenient.”

For someone who loves talking about himself, he sure doesn’t like talking about _himself_.

Tsuna turns on the TV. According to his Device, it’s two in the morning, so there’s no point on calling anyone. Except, well, Kusakabe, who he texts, but he decides saying they’re in Italy is too big of a bomb to drop, so he just says they’ll be gone for the next few days.

“Takeshi has the things that were on the hotel roof,” Tsuna says quietly, “you can look at them when we get back.”

“Don’t need them anymore,” Hibari says simply.

_Of course he doesn’t._

Tsuna flips through channels, but can’t find anything interesting at two in the morning, so he sets it to what appears to be a channel dedicated to elevator music, turns it down to a quiet murmur of tone, and lays down on the couch. The lighting dial — or one of them — is in the bedroom with Hibari, who turns it off so the only light comes from the logo on the TV screen.

It’s dark, and warm, but isolated and unfriendly. A layer of tension washes over Tsuna. He’s not used to falling asleep alone in unfamiliar places, he thinks. Ever since…

His stomach drops. He stops thinking about it immediately.

“Do you sleep better?” Tsuna asks to the dark ceiling.

“Mm?”

“Do you sleep better with the vacuum?”

“Hm.” The noise is wondering. He probably hadn’t thought about it. “Yes.”

Tsuna swallows shame and fear and slides off the couch. “We should sleep with skin contact.”

“Reversed. You cling.”

“Okay.”

Tsuna pads up to the bed and pulls the blankets at Hibari’s feet back. He takes one of the pillows and sticks it there, and crawls in. Hibari had slept in his socks and shoes, so they should smell like sweat, but it seems they’ve aired out since then, because they’re basically odorless. That’s good.

There’s plenty of room on the bed, and with a nudge to the side, they’re not in contact.

Still, Tsuna can hear his breathing, and he can feel his warmth next to him, and if he wanted to, he could reach out and touch another human being. It’s a far cry from the sense of dark isolation he’s afraid of, and in a vehicle as isolated as this one, Tsuna won’t wake to cold, dead, and heavy silence, left to pick himself up and carry himself home.

He falls asleep to the hum of the jet engine, and he thinks he feels just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if I got any of the language bits wrong. They're all somewhat necessary in context. I didn't research too intimately, so check me where necessary.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who's ever left a review, drawn fanart, or publically expressed fondness for this fic, I love you and you're everything to me. I'll probably rush right into the next part because I've been wanting to write the Bovino and the Varia for ages, but while we're still here, at the end of things, I'm happy to have you here.
> 
> Drop by my [fic Tumblr](http://micronecro.tumblr.com/), if you wanna talk intensely, it's where I post the (LOADS AND LOADS OF) art and meta about this fic, as well as my other stories. Make sure to drop by the [ website](http://detsuna.weebly.com/) for all your lore needs, too. Thanks again, make sure you bookmark the series here on AO3, and I can't wait to see you in the next one!


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